Airline safety duties not a 'workplace right'
At presstime, the Federal Court had ruled that duties and obligations under civil aviation regulations do not constitute a workplace right after rejecting licensed aircraft maintenance engineers' adverse action claim.
The Australia Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association launched the adverse action claim on behalf of six Sunstate engineers who refused to release aircraft on October 19, 2010 after reporting defects and an excessive oil leak they said required an engine change for flight. The subsequent grounding of six aircraft occurred at a time when there were "go slows" and "unresolved issues" between ALAEA and Sunstate over the renewal of an enterprise agreement.
In response to the action, Sunstate gave the engineers formal warnings, rostered them off their usual shifts and docked four hours pay from their wages.
ALAEA alleged Sunstate had taken adverse action against the engineers for fulfilling their reporting obligations under the Civil Aviation Regulation.
Justice John Logan found the regulation was not a "workplace law" under the Act and so was not a source of workplace rights.
The judge conceded that workplace laws could extend to regulations made under an enactment.
However, "it does not follow from this conclusion that the two particularized CA Regs are a law of the Commonwealth 'that regulates the relationship between employers and employees'", he said. "Not only must the law 'regulate' but there must be an object of regulation of a particular specified kind - 'relationships between employers and employees'."
He found the object of the CA Regs was air safety and the employer-employee relationship was only "an incidental touchstone for the imposition of duties serving other ends".
Even if the regulation was a workplace law, he found Sunstate had not taken adverse action against the engineers because they exercised a workplace right. He found the engineers' reporting was "in reality industrial actions cloaked in aviation safety issues" and that they "deliberately" sought to find the defects "[W]hat occurred on the evening of Oct 19 were not actions of men faithful to their trade responsibilities," he said.