NSW lawyer Hayden Stephens has been at the centre of a number of successful class actions to ensure underpaid workers receive their fair benefits. Class actions on behalf of junior doctors have resulted in settlements of over $435 million to date.
Hayden Stephens, lawyer and founder of Hayden Stephens & Associates, has established his reputation as a fierce advocate for junior doctors in Australia since his firm launched the first junior doctors class action in 2020. Since then, he has represented junior doctors from NSW, Tasmania, ACT and Victoria in class actions that strive to hold health authorities to account for unfit workplace conditions and underpayment. To date, he has ensured that underpaid junior doctors have been paid back $435 million in unpaid wages.
Stephens tells LSJ Online that the NSW case achieved a settlement of $229 million. It was, and remains, the largest underpayment action of its kind in Australian legal history. Pursuant class actions have also achieved substantial results for plaintiffs, with the ACT junior doctors case settling for $31.5 million, and the Victorian case $175 million.
There were approximately 27,000 group members covered by the NSW class action, with some 16,000 junior doctors eventually participating in the settlement scheme.
“… many doctors we spoke to held a genuine fear that if they stuck their hand up and claimed, they would be marked as a black sheep in their workplace.”
Stephens says it is not unusual in class...
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