The FWC has upheld the sacking of a Telstra business centre's IT technician accused of supplying drugs, accessing p-rnography, sending the director's confidential documents outside the company and remotely locking the entire workplace out of the network during an investigation into his conduct.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a 63-year-old male employee who sent text messages calling a 37-year-old male colleague his "bitch" and "toy boy" and threatened to "molest" him and squeeze his testicles until it made him cry.
There is "no place for bawdy offensive alpha-male behaviour in the workplace", the FWC has found, in upholding the dismissal of a male worker for asking a female colleague for a kiss and telling another co-worker that he wanted to "f-ck" his sister.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a warehouse worker who repeatedly breached his employer's policies on smoking, eating and drinking in the workplace.
The FWC has told an employer that it must accept responsibility for a "suboptimal" workplace culture that it could have reset before sacking two senior wharf workers who verbally abused a female colleague, but it upheld their dismissals for behaviour that "crossed the line".
A full bench has allowed an employee to challenge his dismissal for refusing to use his employer's fingerprint scanning technology that monitored attendance and tracked shifts, finding the case raises "important, novel and emerging issues".
A council's imposition of a seven-month "leave blackout" period in a quest for greater efficiencies has run foul of the FWC, the tribunal finding its failure to consult workers over the policy breached best practice and notification provisions in its agreement.
A company that withdrew an offer of employment when it discovered the potential employee's criminal record has paid her $2500 compensation and revised its global recruitment and HR practices, after the AHRC found it discriminated against her.
The Australian Electoral Commission was entitled to summarily sack a team leader for fudging industrial election figures to mask errors made by an inexperienced colleague, the FWC has found.
The FWC has highlighted the pitfalls for workers who opt to resign rather than risk reputational damage from being sacked, in a case in which it says it would have deemed any dismissal unfair.
