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.
Mining unions are seeking an urgent meeting with BHP Billiton over a new alcohol policy limiting workers at remote camps to four standard drinks per day.
A government agency has been ordered to reinstate a worker dismissed a year after it attributed a workplace vehicle collision to "human error", the FWC finding it had produced no further evidence to warrant the change of heart.
The FWC has reinstated a bacon worker, after holding it was not threatening to say she felt like knocking a colleague off her perch, while finding the employer contributed to their stress, denied her procedural fairness and had a tendency to exaggerate evidence.
