The Case-
Widgets & Gadgets Manufacturing Company (W&G) is a large employer that manufactures components for industrial machinery in the Newcastle area. The production line runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The shortest breakdown of the production line could potentially cost W&G thousands of dollars. Approximately 70% of the workforce is male.
Janet worked as a maintenance engineer at W&G. Her role was to ensure that the production equipment was properly maintained and to be available in the event of any breakdowns. Janet had worked for W&G for about 10 years. She took parental leave in 2010 and, on her return, was reinstated to her previous position.
Under its Enterprise Agreement, maintenance engineers are required to be available to do regular week-end work under a roster system. Janet was therefore part of a roster system with 2 other engineers (both male) who were all required to work on one weekend out of every three. On the weekends Janet was rostered to work overtime she was required to be at her place of work for three hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday. The hours could be worked at any time on Saturday and Sunday, either in a block of three hours or broken up around other activities as the engineer desired. In addition, the engineer rostered on had to remain ‘on-call' in case of emergencies and could be called in at any time. It was a flexible situation for both the engineers and for W&G.
In addition to the formal roster which was kept by management, there was an informal roster system in place where the engineers voluntarily swapped week-ends amongst themselves by agreement. Put simply, the management of W&G did not care who worked the week-ends, it just wanted it worked by someone on the roster.
Janet approached her Manager, Adam Smith, because she felt she could no longer work week-ends at all because of her parenting responsibilities. Mr. Smith argued that Janet could not refuse to undertake the required week-end work because it was an essential part of the job. In addition, Mr. Smith felt that it was up to Janet to cooperate with the other two engineers to ensure the roster was covered. Further, he considered that it would be unfair to always rely on the other two engineers to cover the week-ends.
Up until this time, the informal roster arrangements between the three engineers had always been done on a friendly basis. The three engineers had always agreed to cover for one another whenever one of them could not do their formally rostered week-end. Things, however, began to change. The other two engineers began to insist that Janet work to the formal roster.
Janet struggled to do this for several week-ends. Then, on one of the week-ends Janet was scheduled to work, her husband was away and Janet approached the two other engineers and asked if one of them could work her week-end because she had no-one else to look after the baby. They both refused and said that if she wanted to be an engineer then she had to act like one.
Janet again approached Mr. Smith complaining that the other two engineers were not being cooperative. Mr. Smith stated: "you're all grown-ups - work it out between the three of you". Over the next few months Mr. Smith and the two engineers repeatedly demanded that Janet work to the roster. In the space of one week, Mr. Smith approached Janet on five separate occasions demanding she cooperate and either work flexibly with her colleagues or works the formal roster. He suggested that she was responsible for disrupting the collaborative culture of the workplace and indicated that if she could not work her roster, then she should resign. Janet's engineer colleagues began to tease her about her ‘motherly' ways and complain to her that she was putting her family ahead of her job.
Janet started to feel extremely pressured and eventually resigned.
Your assignment is to assess whether and on which grounds Janet could submit an anti-discrimination case to the Federal Circuit Court of Australia based on the following two different assumptions:
1. Her husband's work requires him to work weekends.
2. Her husband does not work weekends.
Only use relevant anti-discrimination law(s) to analyze your case.
The following criteria will be used for marking the assignment.
Part 1: The Issue/s - Identify the main legal issue or issues of Janet's case.
Part 2: The Law - Name the relevant federal (Commonwealth) legislation that pertains to this case and list the applicable clauses in that legislation.
Part 3: Applying the Law -
a) Apply all the clauses of the legislation you identified in Part 2 to Janet's case.
b) Identify and apply appropriate legal cases to support or refute a finding of the issue or issues you identified in Question 1.
Part 4: Conclusion -
a) Based on your answers to Part 3, draw a conclusion on the likely outcome of this case if it were to be heard by the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia. In no more than 200 words explain your reasoning.
b) Using one similar case, identify what might be the likely remedy (if any).
c) Citing relevant clauses of the legislation, identify who would be potentially liable.