A director repeatedly targeted by the FWO who "brazenly" continued operating businesses despite a restraining order and habitually and deliberately underpaid workers has been ordered to stump-up $479,000 in penalties against him and his companies.
A court has awarded more than $500,000 in penalties to an 80-year-old former pistol club manager paid for more than a decade just $250 a week, from which the employer deducted $100 as rent for the on-site mobile home she lived in with her disabled son.
The FWC has ordered compensation for an unfairly sacked WesTrac specialist who altered a leave claim to secure payment for public holidays during the Stokes family-controlled company's end-of-year shutdown period.
A judge has questioned the FWO's "vigour" in seeking penalties against an "impoverished" dairy business whose owner is already struggling to make $300 weekly instalments to compensate an underpaid worker.
The FWC has upheld a coal mining company's right to stop accrual of annual leave for employees when they take industrial action or are locked out, in a decision with potential implications for the wider industry.
A Federal Court majority has quashed a finding that the Black Coal Award requires BHP's Operations Services in-house labour hire arm to give its workforce two common public holidays off each year, and to cap shifts at 10 hours unless most employees agree to additional hours at overtime rates.
An employer that underpaid an IT specialist it treated as a contractor for 14 years should have addressed the "uncertainty" involved, but its misdeeds nevertheless fell at "the lower end of the seriousness spectrum", a court has found in a penalty ruling.
Qantas customer service airport workers, head office and call centre staff have voted up a deal delivering "well above" the Flying Kangaroo's wage cap policy, securing at least 5% in the first year alone plus "vital" job security protections, according to the ASU.
The NSWNMA has secured its first private sector IBD, after it agreed to a 16% pay rise over four years for Healthscope nurses and midwives, but remained at an impasse on annual leave provisions.
