An insolvent NT "space base" has been ordered to pay $2.3 million to its former chief executive, ousted shortly before NASA launched three commercial rockets from its Cape York site.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a nurse who attempted to start a competitor to an ANMF branch, finding that he called in sick and used the time to campaign, repeatedly complained about his colleagues and HR without foundation, and had been "indiscriminately rude".
An unfairly sacked concreter has been denied reinstatement or compensation, after the FWC accepted that his threats of violence scared his colleagues and their spouses.
The FWC has backed Amazon's sacking of an injured worker who refused to have an independent medical examination, while another employer's income protection policy has weighed in favour of finding it not unfair to dismiss an incapacitated diesel fitter.
In a sign of the FWC's growing frustration with not just the number of applications flowing across its desk but the prevalence of applicants dropping off the map, a member has lamented a worker's "disconcerting" failure to engage with the tribunal and the concomitant waste of valuable "time and resources".
A recruiter has failed to win $50,000 compensation from Bluescope Steel for allegedly sacking him following his complaints about being bullied by its HR team, after a judge took into account that he had previously lied to the FWC and "embellished" his résumé.
In a decision highlighting the need to confirm an employee's intentions before taking an ambiguous or emotionally charged exchange to be a resignation, the FWC will continue hearing a farm hand's unfair dismissal case after rejecting the employer's argument that he quit of his own volition.
A Fair Work Commission member has offered a "simpler" approach to determining whether workers' employment ended at the employer's initiative in cases involving alleged abandonment of employment.
The FWC has ordered BHP's labour hire arm to reinstate a worker sacked for saying a female colleague had a "giga-chin" and a "fat -rse", finding he had no idea what the first term meant and that the second accusation, when reframed as "phat -rse", gave it a different complexion.
