RTBU takes it to Asciano over legal representation. And wins.

The Fair Work Commission has sided with the RTBU, ruling that Asciano has sufficient internal legal and HR resources to be able to represent in the Industrial Relations tribunal.

Asciano had attempted to challenge a FWC ruling that refused to allow the company to have external legal representation at an unfair dismissal case involving the RTBU.

The company had argued that it was unfair that the employee involved would be represented by the union, while the ASX 100 company would be forced to rely on internal resources.

The RTBU argued that Asciano – which owns Pacific National – could effectively represent itself using its qualified HR practitioners and said that companies’ routinely using trained layers to perform work that could be done by in-house staff was resulting in a situation where everyone had to ‘lawyer up’ in order to maintain fairness in the Commission proceedings.