BHP and Rio Tinto are facing class actions accusing them of failing to protect women who worked for them and their contractors against sexual assault, discrimination and harassment over the past 20 years.
The FWC has made it clear that HR managers should not inform employees about company policies as a "tick and flick" exercise, finding an employer harshly sacked a worker who had no understanding of his unacceptable behaviour when he bullied a colleague for supposedly "sucking up" to their manager.
The FWC has ruled that an intoxicated FIFO female mineworker rubbing up against and trying to hold hands with her male colleagues when commuting to her worksite amounted to harassment and s-xual harassment and warranted BHP dismissing her.
The FWC has upheld a law firm's dismissal of a solicitor accused of "gaming" its timekeeping system to boost a junior colleague's billable hours and telling an opposing practitioner his client was a "c-nt".
The FWC has backed the Commonwealth Bank's sacking of an "insubordinate" worker who argued it could not discipline him for pummelling his manager with abusive text messages because he sent them outside of working hours.
The FWC has extended time for a worker's general protections application after one of its employees gave her "inappropriate" advice, after which she discontinued her initial claims.
The FWC has warned employers against giving "generic and blanket HR answers" when they provide their "reasonable business grounds" for knocking back flexibility requests, before ultimately rejecting a bid from a worker with challenging caring responsibilities to continue working entirely from home.
Legislation introduced recently to Queensland's Parliament imposes a positive duty that goes beyond the Respect@Work model, adds new protected attributes to the Anti-Discrimination Act and improves protections for workers assaulted on the job, but the State union peak body is disappointed it continues to permit religious bodies to discriminate in employment.
Misinterpretation of "curt or abrupt" messages between a remote manager and worker and "unhelpful" accusations of "frivolous and vexatious" complaints did not amount to bullying, but the manager might have needed support to better supervise his remote team, the FWC has found.
The ACTU is calling for flexible work arrangement requests to extend to reproductive health issues, ahead of consideration of the issue at next week's triennial Congress in Adelaide.
