Employment rights legal centre JobWatch says a client survey suggests most employers are failing to take internal complaints of workplace sexual harassment and discrimination seriously or to adequately protect employees, prompting recommendations to expand positive duty and vicarious liability provisions, and actively monitor compliance.
Maurice Blackburn's head of employment and industrial law, Josh Bornstein, says damages for discrimination and harassment "remain persistently low" but he expects an upwards trajectory as their impact has been "laid bare" and expectations are now clearer.
"Australia's unluckiest job applicant" has been ordered to pay a labour hire company indemnity costs of $44,000 for a "time-wasting" failed discrimination case, in which he sought $115,000 in compensation and refused an early $5000 settlement offer.
A UK tribunal has found that a job interviewer asked seven questions that could be "reasonable and entirely innocuous" individually, but cumulatively could constitute racial discrimination.
Individual age discrimination complaints have "fundamental limitations for achieving systemic change" and should be supported by other regulatory tools, greater transparency and collective action, an academic says.
A court has upped from $20,000 to $90,000 the general damages payout for a veteran chief accountant subjected to age discrimination and is considering billing his former employer a further $142,000 for economic loss, after hearing he is "no longer the same man" and is unable to work.
A lawyer is suing her former firm for $2 million in a case accusing it of misrepresenting her employment as that of an independent contractor and discriminating against her because of her gender, race and age.
The Andrews Government has responded to IR Victoria's review of child employment legislation by introducing amendments to broaden the definition of employment, simplify the licensing system and extend its coverage to not-for-profit organisations.
Victoria's Supreme Court has ruled that an employer might have treated a manager unfavourably because of her age and sex when it ignored her repeated requests to provide her similar over-agreement pay rates to those afforded to male colleagues, while it has also found that the State's equal opportunity laws enable consideration of "unconscious bias".