Industrial action – termination of protected industrial action – s.424 Fair Work Act 2009 – industrial action approved by employees included various stoppages of work, bans on overtime, and range of other types of industrial action – employees planned on having five consecutive bans working overtime for a period of 24 hours each, commencing at 12.01am on Monday, 2 November 2015 and recurring at 12.01am each subsequent week until the AWU notified otherwise – employer had particular concern about ban and effect it has on ability of the employer to retain a state of readiness at the required level as indicated by the Fire Danger Index (FDI) at any particular time – employer submitted Victoria is facing a severe fire season and particular states of readiness require fire service officers (FSOs) to be held at the depot beyond their normal finishing time, on overtime, ready to respond to a fire event immediately – objective is to have staff and resources available to have 80% of fires suppressed at the first attack on that fire and before more than five hectares of land is burned – Commission found overtime ban is protected industrial action – not convinced employees could be at home and ‘on-call’ as employees would be further from the depot and the response time may be affected – satisfied the ban on overtime may affect the level of readiness and hence the ability of FSOs to respond to a fire event – no suggestion employees would not respond to any emergency or danger with utmost professionalism but slight delay in responding may have consequences that no one considered – industrial action terminated. State of Victoria (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning) v The Australian Workers’ Union.
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