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Involving us early means that we can advise you of your legal rights and options and help you to respond to any employer enquiries in the best possible way.

Although we have still been able to assist these members, in almost all cases the outcome was not as positive as it could have been had the VAU been contacted by the relevant members earlier.

Why you should contact the VAU early

If the VAU is involved from the start of a process initiated by your employer, we can make sure that they are following their own policies and processes when discussing issues of concern with you, and that you are afforded any procedural rights that you are entitled to under your employment contract or Enterprise Agreement.

Involving us early also means that we can advise you of your legal rights and options and help you to respond to any employer enquiries in the best possible way.

If we are not involved early you may:

• mistakenly disclose information to your employer which inadvertently prejudices your position;
• agree to an outcome or process which is not appropriate; or
• use language in communication with your employer which may later be used as the basis of an allegation against you.

Tips to ensure you get help

If your employer contacts you (either by phone or email) and tells you that they want to discuss allegations of misconduct/serious misconduct a performance concern, or anything else relating to your employment, you should do the following:

1. Tell your employer that you would like to have a VAU representative present as a support person before you have any conversations with them. If possible, try not to discuss any details with your employer before you have had a chance to speak with the VAU. In this situation, let your employer know that you would like to obtain advice from the VAU before responding verbally or in writing. If, after telling your employer that you would like a representative of the VAU to attend as your support person, your employer responds by saying that they are issuing you with a “lawful and reasonable direction to attend a meeting” and that “you must therefore attend as directed”, let them know that you are complying with the lawful and reasonable direction and will attend the meeting, but that you are just requesting that a VAU representative attend as a support person;
2. Contact us and give us as much detail as possible (including dates of proposed meetings) so that we can help you. You can contact us by emailing [email protected];
3. Do not provide any response in writing until you receive advice from the VAU. If you would like to respond to any questions put to you by your employer in writing, please send any draft emails to us first so that we can give you advice about the language and tone of the same and advise on any implications from sending the proposed email.

For your reference, if you ask for a union representative to attend as a support person and your employer either:

1. refuses to allow you to have a support person; or
2. refuses to reschedule a meeting so that a union representative can attend; and
3. you are later dismissed from your employment;

the refusal could be grounds for contesting termination of employment via unfair dismissal proceedings.

If you forget to get us involved early or something has happened in the past where you didn’t seek the assistance of a VAU representative, we recommend that you keep file notes of your conversations, including key dates/times of discussions and record who was present at meetings/when events occurred. These file notes can be used to give us background as to what occurred and help us to address any inconsistencies in your responses which maybe raised by your employer as part of the process.

Identifying when you should contact the VAU

Below are some common examples of situations members have faced which we provide to help you identify similar situations moving forward:

If you have any question about what is contained in this bulletin please contact [email protected].

In Solidarity,