The FWC has upheld a worker's flexible work request after his employer ended an informal 13-year arrangement, in a decision reaffirming the precedence of the NES, even when it is inconsistent with the terms of an enterprise agreement.
A FWC presidential member has clarified the Commission's "global" approach to the BOOT and warned that agreements that pay only slightly above-award will attract greater scrutiny, in rejecting a West Australian coffee chain's proposed agreement.
The FWC has put a global services giant's proposed new catering agreement at a Queensland mine on hold after weighing claims of casuals being parachuted in around voting time against hard evidence that it will cut workers' pay by more than $10,000 a year.
The 25% exemption rate the Ai Group has proposed for an estimated one million workers covered by the clerical award "does not adequately compensate" for the loss of penalty rates and overtime, according to ASU national secretary Emeline Gaske.
The FWC has ruled an employer had a right to refuse to pay sick leave to a worker recently warned about his "particularly excessive" use of the entitlement, while finding it nevertheless "irrelevant" whether cosmetic surgery or a burst appendix explained his absence.
The FWC has overruled an employer's resistance to a working parent's request to work an extra day a fortnight at home to care for his toddler daughter until she reaches two years of age, while rejecting its claims that it would set a precedent for the remainder of its workforce.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a manager on the Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest-owned Lizard Island who emailed a former colleague's employment contract to a friend with HR experience in an effort to build an underpayment case.
The FWC has become overly focussed on verifying workers' eligibility for flexible work requests by imposing onerous evidentiary requirements on them, which has limited the effectiveness of its new dispute power, a researcher has told the review panel in her response to its Secure Jobs, Better Pay draft report.
In rare flexibility orders won by an ANMF organiser who moved 500km from the office after experiencing domestic violence, the FWC has temporarily blocked the union from requiring her to work more than three nights per fortnight away from home and directed it to count travel time as work time between certain hours for the first half of the school year.
Ahead of a 10-day full bench hearing of a bid to significantly shake-up the retail award, the ACTU has hit out at employers backing measures to "buy-out" core conditions for workers on as little as $53,680 a year, ditch "smokos" and introduce split shifts.
