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ALDI loses Federal Court Appeal

A Full Bench of the Federal Court has today upheld Fair Work Commission (FWC) decisions that ALDI, in altering the notice of employee representational rights (NERR) it issued to its employees in the process of bargaining for new agreements in 2016, made non-trivial departures from the regulatory requirements.

ALDI in its applications to approve the 2016 ALDI Minchinbury and ALDI Derrimut agreements, covering employees in stores, warehouse and delivery driving, deliberately deviated from the NERR form prescribed by the regulations. ALDI replaced the word ‘employer’ with ‘leader’ on the forms it distributed to employees.

The Federal Court has upheld the decisions of Deputy President Bull and a FWC Full Bench to reject the agreements as the technical requirements to approve the two agreements had not been met.

ALDI’s appeal has been dismissed by the Federal Court on the basis that there was no jurisdictional error made by the Commission.

The SDA and FWC were respondents in this matter. The SDA is pleased that the FWC decisions have been upheld as they were made on the law as it stood at the time the ALDI applications were made.

There are two further ALDI applications for the non-union Jandakot and Regency Park agreements still before the FWC, similarly affected by defective NERR. The applications are pending, subject to the outcome of today’s decision.

Please quote SDA spokesperson

Media contact: Darren Rodrigo 0414 783 405