The FWC has reinstated a firefighter who refused to provide proof of his COVID-19 vaccination status while on leave, observing that his employer failed to properly read a response indicating he was inoculated before taking a "well-worn disciplinary path" towards dismissal.
The FWC has held that resource giant South32 unfairly treated some workers it directed to isolate and get tested after identifying them as COVID-19 contacts, ordering it to recredit annual leave, deduct sick leave and pay them for other times as though they were at work.
The FWC has acknowledged both the work/family difficulties faced by remote workers and employers' challenges in managing employees scattered across the country in upholding the dismissal of a FIFO mine worker sacked for abandoning his employment after he left work without approved leave and failed to provide a return date.
A senior FWC member has lambasted an "incompetent" and "belligerent" representative involved in numerous challenges to vaccination-related dismissals, bemoaning that a regulatory gap prevented him from awarding costs against the offending individual.
An Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission employee seeking to combine working from home and carer's leave to avoid COVID-19 while he and his endometriosis-suffering wife undergo IVF treatment has failed to establish his circumstances are exceptional under the agency's agreement provisions.
An employer had no basis for summarily dismissing a real estate employee who tested positive for COVID-19 five days after ignoring directions to wear a mask when inspecting the property of an aged care worker, the FWC has found.
A Federal Court judge has moved swiftly to shut down a legal representative for 18 airline workers seeking damages for COVID-19 vaccination-related sackings after he sent "obscene [and] threatening" emails to the defendants' lawyers and in-house IR teams.
A FWC member wrongly concluded that he lacked the power to hear the case of a university employee sacked for refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccination directions, a full bench has found.
A large employer had no need to pay for external lawyers when it could have relied on its HR team to argue against a former employee's "straightforward" vaccination case, the FWC has found.
The FWC has declined to hear the unfair sacking case of a vaccinated worker who passed up "at least" eight chances to confirm her inoculation status before her employer dismissed then reinstated her within 48 hours.
