The FWC has upheld a building company's sacking of a safety officer who insisted his job was limited to an advisory capacity despite repeated warnings that he was to rigorously enforce safety across sites.
The FWC has found a Coles Supermarkets baker who texted explicit images to a manager who responded "great d--k pic" did not sexually harass him as he appeared to initially take them as "a joke", but the tribunal has upheld his dismissal as his behaviour breached the retailer's code of conduct.
In an indication of the harder line the FWC is taking on allowing lawyers to appear, it has rejected a bid for representation by a large well-resourced employer with thousands of employees that claimed its in-house IR and HR personnel lacked sufficient advocacy experience to defend an unfair dismissal case.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a senior ETU delegate who objected to his employer's introduction of GPS tracking, finding he deliberately wrapped his device in a Twisties bag to conceal his whereabouts and falsified service records when absent from work.
An "acquiescent" labour hire company should have sought more information from a host employer about its reasons for ending the placement of an on-hire worker, the FWC has ruled in finding her dismissal unfair.
A rail employee denied reinstatement in part as a result of post-dismissal Facebook posts calling his employer a "bastard" and "criminal with stars" will have another shot at challenging his sacking, after a NSW court of appeal found the state IRC exceeded its powers.
A law firm chief executive's "abrasive" email to 80 lawyers warning that "the lion will soon be catching up with any sick zebras" has come back to bite him, the FWC finding that he unfairly dismissed a senior associate given two weeks' notice for allegedly threatening legal action.
An FWC full bench has granted permission to appeal the sacking by resources giant FMG of an employee just one week into a six-week performance improvement plan (PIP), but has cautioned against interpreting its ruling as suggesting that employers must always see such processes through to the end.
The FWC has ruled that an organisation's failure to provide notice to a poorly-performing finance manager rendered her dismissal unfair, but has refused to order compensation because she "deliberately deceived" it about her qualifications.
"No human resources specialist would have recommended" the manner in which a company dismissed a worker after his "appalling conduct" when he swore in a vulgar way at his boss, the FWC has found.
