Public service employees may appeal certain decisions that affect their employment.
Appeals can be made against:
- decisions under a directive
- discipline decisions
- promotion decisions
- transfer decisions
- temporary employment decisions
- casual employment decisions
- fair treatment decisions
- other decisions.
Periodically the Public Service Commission publishes ‘notable’ cases to provide agencies and employees considering an appeal with information about decisions made by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC).
1. Decisions under a directive
2. Casual employment
3. Temporary employment
- Ongoing role – relevance of employment history
- Nature of project may be a genuine operational reason
- Vacancy and funding not a requirement for an ongoing role
- Katae v State of Queensland
- Genuine operational reasons
- Qualifying Service
- Examination of other roles
- Conversion considerations
- Conversion of a temporary employee to permanent; consideration of ongoing funding
- Agency's failure to properly apply directive resulted in temporary employment decision being not fair and reasonable
- Disciplinary action and the Temporary Employment Directive
4. Promotion
- Potential bias in promotion process 1
- Potential bias in promotion process 2
- Reviewability of selection decisions and process deficiency in recruitment and selection
- Confidentiality in a recruitment and selection process
- Fair interview process – applicant provided with the wrong interview questions
- Inappropriate considerations when making a promotion decision; panel members socialising with applicants at work events
- Potential conflict of interest; unevenly weighted recruitment process
- Use of the same or similar questions in recruitment processes
5. Discipline
- Disciplinary action of reduction in classification level and consequential change of duties
- Ceasing penalty payments not a consideration in determining whether disciplinary action is fair and reasonable
- Misuse of an employee's official position
- Appropriate use of transfer as a disciplinary action; and combining misconduct and breaches of Code of Conduct under section 187 of the Act
- Unacceptable length of time for discipline decision resulted in reduction in disciplinary action
- Agency's delay in issuing show cause notice prior to making disciplinary declaration decision was not significant to influence outcome on appeal
- Recording workplace conversations
- Impact of employee co-operation on disciplinary penalty
- Conflict of interest; constructive steps must be taken to rehabilitate a disciplined employee
- Discipline decisions can be made on the balance of probabilities where there is no corroborating evidence
