Good Morning,

Welcome to the October edition of The New Workplace.

October has been and continues to be a very exciting and busy month for the FCB Group.

In this edition of The New Workplace, Jane Cleary (FCB Workplace Law) takes a look at recent decisions of Fair Work Australia relating to union rights to enter a workplace to hold discussions with employees. These decisions demonstrate that employers must take care when either denying a union representative entry to hold discussions with employees or when insisting those discussions occur in a particular room or area. They highlight that where entry is unlawfully denied or where the room or area allocated by an employer for these discussions to take place is "unreasonable", significant penalties can be ordered and it can often be viewed by employees as a significant win for the union.

Jenny Fung (FCB Workplace Law) also examines the recent New South Wales Court of Appeal decision of Purcell v Tullett Prebon (Aust) P/L in which an employee was ordered to pay their employer in excess of $500,000 in damages for having breached their employment contract.

FCB Technology has also been involved in some very interesting work, and this month we take a look at how FCB Technology's enableHR platform is helping the finance industry meet the challenges of a multitude of legislative change, including the requirement of the National Consumer Credit Protection legislation.

This month also saw the Melbourne launch of FCBHR and its groundbreaking LIEP model with the Sydney launch taking place at the Sydney Convention Centre, Darling Harbour on 20 October 2010. The Melbourne launch was very successful, well attended and generated some fantastic feedback. Please take advantage of the upcoming Sydney launch next week. We know you will take away great value from it.