Managing Workplace Relations: Relevant Laws and Acts

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MANAGING WORK PLACE RELATIONS
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The Relevant Laws and Acts to the Case and How They Relate
There were several provisions that were relevant to this case and informed the decision
making in the case. These provisions primarily came from the major federal industrial statute;
the Fair Work Act 2009. However, there were also notable statutory provisions which informed
the ruling in the case, namely: the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 (Cth), and the
Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth).
Generally, the dispute arose out of negotiations between Qantas and the three unions,
under pt 2-4 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (herein referred to as ‘FW Act’), for new
enterprise agreements to regulate the terms and conditions of employment of relevant Qantas
employees. The significance of the provision is that it recognizes labor unions (as the three
unions were part of the ones recognized) and connotes the significance of unions in labor laws.
A lockout of employees was in the very foundation of the suit. It was key that statutory
provision which backs up and explains the move be cited in the course of the dispute resolution.
In the commencement of the dispute this provision was cited as s 19, 3 of the FW Act which
states that “An employer locks out employees from their employment if the employer prevents
the employees from performing work under their contracts of employment without terminating
those contracts.” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce relied on the provision in locking out the employees
and justly so.
The unions sought to rely on pt. 3-3 of the FW Act which provide that “employees and
their bargaining representatives are permitted to organize and engage in such action in support of
claims made in negotiations for a new enterprise agreement.” Another important provision with
this regard was s 409 and s410 of the Act which provided that “The permitted forms of protected

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industrial action by employees are ‘employee claim action and ‘employee response action” The
bargain in good faith provision under s 228 of the FW Act was also imperative in ascertaining
that the parties to the negotiations had good intentions in their bargain.
As for the government’s response, it made an application to FWA under s 424 of the
FW Act. The government elected not to use its powers under Section 431 of the Fair Work Act
2009, which enabled a minister to unilaterally make a declaration to terminate industrial action.
And the application sought termination by FWA of the protected industrial action being taken, or
proposed, by all parties to the dispute relying on s 424(1)(d) of the FW Act which states that the
protected action was threatening, or would threaten, ‘to cause significant damage to the
Australian economy or an important part of it’ (McCrystal, 2010).
The Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 (Cth) came into play because of its
provision that , the federal industrial tribunal could only deal with disputes concerning ‘industrial
matters’, a term defined in s 4 of this Act to include ‘all matters pertaining to the relations of
employers and employees’. Therefore, it was an imperative provision to justifying the
jurisdiction of the tribunal in the case.
Another Act that was pertinent to the issue in place was the Workplace Relations Act
1996 (Cth) s 356 in particular, as inserted by Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices)
Act 2005 (Cth) sch 1; Workplace Relations Regulations 2006 (Cth) ch 2 regs 8.5–8.7. As
commentators have observed, the prohibited content rules betrayed a telling mistrust of
employers, and were scarcely consistent with the ‘freedom’ of agreement-making that the
Coalition professed to support: