The FWC has taken aim at an employer's "lacking" response to workload concerns, in a decision ordering it to reinstate an aged care coordinator it "bombarded with criticism" and accused of putting clients at risk.
In a significant decision on the Fair Work Act's geographical reach, FWC president Adam Hatcher has questioned whether workers need to be both employed by an Australian company and perform work in the country before enjoying the legislation's protections.
The FWC has refused permission for an aviation company and a former manager to be represented by lawyers and an unpaid layperson after they volleyed complaints about each other and offered-up "irrelevant material".
The FWC has awarded $4000 compensation to an allegedly unhelpful IT help desk employee, reminding employers that performance-managing workers is about clear expectations and the steps required to meet them rather than "handholding".
The FWC has awarded almost $25,000 to a former nightclub bookkeeper after finding that the company did not sufficiently remove her ex-husband and majority owner from the decision to sack her for mistakenly posting a t-pless photo in a workplace WhatsApp group.
A senior FWC member has upheld the sacking of a Services Australia worker who accused a centre manager of having a "barely developed prefrontal cortex" and called a colleague "f---king useless", observing that having ADHD is not a "licence" to abuse co-workers without consequences.
A court has thrown out a worker's claim that his employer denied him a chance to defend allegations of intimidating a manager because "society today suggests that a female's word is true", finding instead that it sacked him because of performance issues.
In a case highlighting the judicial system's concerns about self-represented litigants using artificial intelligence, a judge has binned a neurophysiologist's "prolix" 191-page statement of claim and ordered her to "permanently delete" confidential information obtained from her former employer, partly out of fears it could find its way into the public domain if she is feeding it into AI.
