David Jones criticised for its handling of redundancies

The Fair Work Commission said David Jones’ redeployment processes were “far from ideal” and left staff feeling “disgruntled”.

As part of its refurbishment plans for the Burwood store, which would cut its operation down from three levels to two, David Jones redeployed 19 employees and made another 16 redundant.

To determine who would be redeployed, David Jones had managerial staff use a relatively informal “skills and caps assessment” and circulated a survey for employees to complete.

Four of the redundant part-time employees who complained they were unfairly dismissed said they believed they were not redeployed to other stores because they scored low on the assessment.

However, commissioner Stephen Crawford said the assessment was an “inherently subjective” process, so it was likely that some managerial staff would have given different scores for different people.

“The applicants all earned the right to be proud of their long careers with David Jones despite the redundancy process, which was not triggered at all by their performance,” Crawford said.

“I recommend that David Jones reflects on how the process was managed so improvements can be made in the future.

“It is far from ideal that passionate, dedicated and long-term employees have been left feeling so disgruntled at the end of the process.”

Other than making the recommendation, Crawford found David Jones did not unfairly dismiss three of the four employees.

Their redundancies were found to be “genuine redundancies”, with each of the employees notified of the major change to the store, given notice in writing, and had a discussion with managerial staff.

The notice of their redundancies also included a list of available casual positions they could have applied for.

The staff complained of “unfairness” in the redeployment process and threw around the term “favouritism”, but Crawford said the Fair Work Commission did not have the power to overrule David Jones’ decision about which employees it selected to continue working.

Crawford added that the employees were unable to refer to any specific consultation obligation in David Jones’ enterprise agreement that the company failed to comply with when it made the redundancies.

“I also note David Jones is very likely to hire new employees in late 2024 when the refurbishment is completed … David Jones has made it clear that there is no impediment to any of the applicants being rehired in the future,” Crawford said.

“These proceedings should have no bearing on any decisions about whether they will be rehired.”