A FWC full bench led by President Adam Hatcher has abruptly ended conciliation of the crucial clerks award WFH case after a "highly regrettable" leak of confidential information to the media, while issuing a broader warning that participants should respect processes conducted behind-closed-doors.
An attempt to warn companies away from the exploding Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme has fallen flat, after an appeal court found that two directors of an ailing business committed no crime by allegedly hoping liquidators would access taxpayer funds to pay out 58 former employees.
A HR manager opportunistically accused a disgruntled employee of leaking confidential information to "put the blow-torch" to him over his dogged pursuit of underpayments, a court has found.
The FWC has cleared the way for a project manager to pursue his unfair dismissal claim after finding his retention payments do not push him above the high-income threshold as they are not "earnings".
In a genuine redundancy ruling, the FWC has confirmed that it simply needs to consider whether employers have notified a retrenchment in writing, rather than whether they have provided notice in "the most optimum manner".
Drawing on limited legislative guidance and case law on instalment payments, the FWC has ordered an employer to split a $30,000 compensation payment over two months rather than the 12 it sought, finding the worker entitled to the "fruits" of his claim "in a timely manner".
The SDA is challenging what it says is the FWC's failure to immediately terminate a long-expired substandard agreement, arguing that it did not properly consider the unfairness to workers when it allowed the deal to continue to operate for a further three months.
A retrenched educator who rejected an alternative role because she wanted to keep working from home at least a day a week has lost her severance entitlements, after the FWC found she did not have a formal right to maintain her flexible arrangements.