The secret recording has long been the staple of cop shows and gangster movies. The tension builds as the informant is “wired up” – will the wire be discovered? Will the criminals spill the beans about their dastardly plans? And most importantly, will it all happen before I’ve finished this popcorn? Secret recordings raise different

The High Court of Australia has granted special leave to appeal in a case concerning the duty of care which an employer owes to an employee when conducting workplace investigations.  The grant of special leave does not necessarily mean that the law will change, but it does provide a useful opportunity to consider some of

Between 2012 and 2015, a husband and wife operated a radio base for a truck repair company in Wagga  Wagga.  The question of whether they did so as employees or contractors, however, was anything but basic. After 7 days of hearing in the Federal Court, a judgment of 343 paragraphs was delivered.  The judgment identified

For many people, the question, “who do I work for?” will not be a difficult question to answer.  However, the complexity of corporate groups will sometimes make this question very difficult indeed.  Organisations which are large enough to employ HR professionals are usually large enough to have complex structures, and it is important for HR

From time to time, we like to spread the word  of what we do beyond the corners of this website. The word has spread as far as this month’s edition of Australian Dairy Foods Magazine, which includes an article by Angus on the legal implications of monitoring employee communications (arising from a recent case in

When it comes to my favourite things, I never really could get into raindrops on roses, or whiskers on kittens.  Fiduciary duties and chicken schnitzels, however, are pretty high on my list.  So you can imagine my delight when I saw that these two of my favourite things had been brought together in a recent

“Act in haste, repent at leisure” is a proverb which comes up so often in employment law that I have sometimes been tempted to get myself a tattoo of those words.  (If the tattoo was not to my liking, of course, the tattoo would then itself be a perfect example of the proverb).  A recent

Most of us have days when the boss gets on our nerves (not me, of course; my employers are (a) wonderful people and (b) very likely to be reading this). But if the boss gets on your wick and is hopelessly thick so you can’t take a trick, should you call them a dick? The

There are many different ways to measure the ubiquitous success of Uber, but perhaps the most telling is the extent to which the expression “Uber, but for” has become a cliché for describing start-up ideas (“Uber, but for parsley? Sure, I’d love to invest in that!”) Some of these ideas appear to be a little

It’s not often that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gets a lot of coverage in the Australian media. However, the ECHR was front and centre this week after a decision rather luridly headlined (in the Sydney Morning Herald) as “Bosses can snoop on emails to girlfriend, European court finds”. The decision concerned a