ANZ has successfully defended a claim brought against it by a former employee who said it had breached its obligations under the Fair Work Act. But in the judgment handed down last week the bank was criticised for its management practices.Simon Wolfe, a former associate director in the bank's institutional foreign exchange team, claimed that a major reason he was made redundant during a restructure in 2011 was because he had taken long service leave so he could look after his young family. He argued that this was a contravention of the Fair Work Act, which says that an employer must not take adverse action against an employee because of family or carer's responsibilities (among other things), and that an employer must not take adverse action against an employee who has exercised a workplace right (such as the right to take long service leave).The Magistrates Court of Australia ruled that ANZ management had "discharged the onus" imposed by the relevant sections of the Act with respect to the decision to dismiss Wolfe.However, it also found that there was a lack of transparency in the way ANZ management dealt with the restructuring exercise, selections were "substantially subjective" and the bank failed to give appropriate weight in the performance assessment process to Wolfe's legitimate absence from work because of family responsibilities.Wolfe started work at ANZ in 1995 and a couple of years later he was moved into the foreign exchange team. By 2005, he was an associate director of the FX institutional sales team in New South Wales. In October 2010 Wolfe's third child was born, and in April of the following year he applied for annual leave and long service leave to care for his family. His leave was approved, with a return date of October 2011.While Wolfe was on leave, a decision was made to reduce the number of employees in corporate sales. Thirteen positions would be required to participate in a "spill and fill" process. One of the positions affected was Wolfe's, which was to be merged with another role.Wolfe submitted an application for an available associate director position in institutional FX.He returned to work in October and was told he had been unsuccessful in his application, because another candidate had been preferred, and he was being put on "redeployment". He was not given an interview before the decision was made. A week later he was moved to another floor, where he was given no work to do. A month later he was given a retrenchment notice.Wolfe's manager, Richard Jones, the head of institutional FX in NSW, said in an affidavit: "My decision was based on the performance of both candidates, including my expectation of their future performance, and was unrelated to Mr Wolfe's taking leave or his family or career responsibilities."However, there was evidence that Wolfe's performance was superior to the preferred candidate, including a 2011 diary entry by Jones ranking his team.Another document, setting out client contact records between October 2010 and May 2011, appeared to show