Workers in the legal profession will reveal whether their employers are complying with their proactive duties to tackle bullying and harassment, under a follow-up equal opportunity review announced in South Australia. Meanwhile, safety professionals have been asked to apply to present on ideas for improving WHS outcomes in Tasmania.
A major study traversing the past four years has revealed that students are the most frequent perpetrators of digital harassment of Australia's university staff, and senior managers in the sector are not doing enough to safeguard workers' psychological health.
A worker has unsuccessfully claimed he was unfairly sacked for raising safety concerns, with a commission hearing a safety regulator investigated and dismissed his concerns, and finding he was sacked for being unable to perform the inherent requirements of his role.
Employers of workers in an at-risk group have been urged to rethink their mental health strategies to support those with suicidal thoughts and other issues, with a caution that "practice has surpassed research".
Workers will be protected from the health and safety risks associated with "availability creep" and excessive hours through the right to "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer" outside of working hours, under agreed legislative changes.
A regulator's claim that to prevent double-dipping it is entitled to recover compensation payments from a worker who received a s-x-discrimination settlement, could, if accepted, have a "chilling effect on the bringing of such complaints" and undermine anti-discrimination laws, a full Federal Court has warned.
Australia has moved a step closer to harmonising the right to disconnect from work, with a parliamentary inquiry recommending the move after hearing workers across multiple sectors are being exhausted and injured "to no good purpose".
The attitudes of workplace health and safety representatives towards the "momentous" legislative changes creating new duties for psychosocial risks will be crucial to the successful implementation of the laws, a study has found.
The first duty holder to be charged under Western Australia's Work Health and Safety Act has become the first entity to enter a WHS undertaking in the State, with its $1.47 million worth of enforceable commitments aligning with the recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry into workplace s-xual harassment.
