Workplace Bullying Lawyers in Melbourne

You do not have to resign to make it stop

Most people being bullied at work believe their only choices are to put up with it or leave. The Fair Work Act gives you a third option most workers have never heard of: a stop bullying order, made by the Fair Work Commission while you keep your job and your pay.

The legal test is repeated unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to your health and safety. Yelling in meetings, systematic exclusion, sabotaged work, impossible deadlines applied to you alone, relentless nitpicking that never touches your colleagues. One bad day will not get you there, but a pattern will, and by the time someone calls us the pattern is usually well established. A good deal of it now happens in group chats and on personal accounts, and where a colleague’s post crosses from unpleasant into false and damaging, social media defamation gives you a claim of your own that does not depend on your employer doing anything about it.

If that describes your workplace, call 1800 130 120 for a free, confidential chat before the behaviour costs you your health or your job.

What the Commission can and cannot do

A stop bullying application asks the Commission to intervene in a live situation. It can order the conduct to stop, require the employer to enforce its own policies, restructure reporting lines, and monitor compliance. Employers take these applications seriously because the Commission’s involvement puts the conduct on a formal record.

What the order cannot do is pay you compensation. If the damage is already done, we look at the routes that can: a WorkCover claim for psychological injury, a general protections claim if complaining brought retaliation down on you, and in serious cases a negligence claim against the employer. Where the treatment is tied to your age, sex, race or another protected attribute, a discrimination claim is often the stronger vehicle, and if any of it is sexual in nature, go straight to sexual harassment, because separate and stronger laws apply there.

The most dangerous week in a bullying matter is the week you resign. Walking out can feel like the only option, but it closes the stop bullying route and weakens everything that follows. Get advice first, even if you are sure you cannot stay.

”Reasonable management action” and how employers hide behind it

The law excludes reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable manner. Employers reach for this defence in almost every matter, usually by relabelling the conduct as performance management. The defence has two requirements and fails if either is missing. A performance process built on shifting goalposts, meetings without warning or a support person, and an outcome that was clearly decided in advance is not carried out reasonably, and the Commission has said so repeatedly.

This is where having a lawyer matters. We frame the application around the pattern and get to the employer’s characterisation of events before it hardens into the accepted story. We also run the conference for you, so you are not sitting there negotiating with your own manager’s barrister on your own. Bullying files rarely arrive alone, and the same employment lawyers handling your stop bullying application will be watching for the dismissal or the WorkCover claim building behind it.

What to do this week

Start the diary today. See your GP if your sleep, health or concentration is suffering, and say why. Do not resign, and do not lodge a formal internal complaint until you have had advice, because how that complaint is written affects every later claim. Then call MK Law on 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. The first call is free, and you will come away knowing whether your situation meets the legal test and what your next move should be.