There’s a limit to new approaches in the Fair Work Commission
The University of Newcastle has made misconduct allegations against three staff over commercialisation of software. One of them, university secretary David Cantrick-Brooks is not covered by the dispute resolution provisions of the university enterprise agreement, which sets out how misconduct investigations are handled.
Mr Cantrick-Brooks went to the Fair Work Commission asking it to deal with his matter under its New Approaches function. Learned readers suggests this is interesting because New Approaches involves the Commission facilitating discussions between parties on what they want from a negotiation and how they can achieve it. New Approaches was used successfully in enterprise bargaining at Macquarie U last year.
But it won’t be in this matter. Deputy President Saunders has found that the basis of New Approaches is that all parties agree to it being used, which the university does not.