PRINCIPAL – Phil Copeland

Phil is a Queensland Law Society Accredited Specialist in Workplace Relations and has over 10 years experience in employment law and industrial relations. A solicitor who also holds a degree in Business, he has worked at several top tier law firms and has been a partner at an international law firm. Phil has gained invaluable exposure to complex and large scale legal issues faced by Australia’s leading companies, particularly those with blue collar workforces. Phil has seen a decade of transformation in the industrial relations landscape of corporate Australia.

Prior to exclusively legal work, Phil held operational and management positions at Queensland Rail and Gordonstone Coal Mine.  These positions provided Phil with invaluable in-situ knowledge of human resources dynamics and the complicated relationship between workforce and management.

The transition to independent legal practice provides the most flexible, high response format for delivering workplace legal solutions evolved from over 30 years accumulated knowledge in the fields of business and industrial relations. Phil is available to provide services 24/7 from coast to coast to meet national corporate needs.

Some of Philip’s achievements include:

• introducing over 100 AWAs into a volatile, underground coal mine;
• successfully negotiating and having certified an agreement covering hundreds of electricity workers in the face of several legal challenges from non-party unions;
• successfully obtaining orders from the Commission for “no requirement to make redundancy payments” in a transmission-of-business situation;
• successfully obtaining orders from the Industrial Court to prevent a union making extra claims;
• successfully obtaining orders from the Commission that a manager was Award-covered and therefore entitled to redundancy payments;
• successfully negotiating with WHSQ to have complaints amended or withdrawn, resulting in clients receiving lower fines.