A full Federal Court has ordered a retrial of a recruitment company employee's adverse action case, finding a Federal Circuit Court judge failed to provide adequate reasons for throwing it out.
In a significant ruling on academic free speech, a university lecturer has been given a second chance to challenge his sacking for superimposing a swastika on an Israeli flag after a full Federal Court found insufficient weight had been attached to an agreement's 'intellectual freedom' clause.
The Federal Court has for the second time this month found that government-owned Airservices Australia failed to meet agreement obligations to consult over changes affecting air traffic controllers, despite its "valiant" attempt to distinguish between 'policies' and 'procedures'.
The FWC has redrawn an employer's "line in the sand" over the use of mobile phones while driving forklifts, ordering it to reinstate and compensate a worker after concluding he was harshly sacked for a first safety policy breach.
The FWC has avoided "unconscionable injustice" to a female Qantas pilot, finding it lacked the power to deal with colleagues' belated challenge to her seniority during a COVID-19-driven "every man for themselves" scramble for the lifeboats.
In an important out-of-hours conduct ruling, the FWC has reinstated a veteran train driver sacked after he told his employer that he faced possible imprisonment for blowing four times over the blood alcohol limit when police breath-tested him on the road.
In a novel use of the Corporations Act in an IR setting, logistics company DHL has secured an urgent interlocutory injunction to stop the UWU procuring alleged confidential information from about 60 shop stewards that might have given it a significant advantage in enterprise negotiations underway across the company's sites.
The FWC has upheld a Qube subsidiary's sacking of a truck driver who blamed a positive blood alcohol reading on sucking on three-quarters of a 10-pack of Anticol cough lozenges to counter a dry throat.
A full bench has quashed a finding that a meatworker is not entitled to payment for time involved in putting on and removing PPE during a half-hour unpaid meal break, but has held an employer's silence did not give the FWC power to arbitrate on the before- and after-work requirement.
The RTBU has used a relatively new Queensland IRC power to hear safety disputes to pursue an alleged sexual harassment case on behalf of an Aurizon train driver member who claims the company "washed its hands" of the matter on the basis that it occurred outside of work.
