The High Court has today unanimously found that an employer breached the Fair Work Act's anti-sham contracting provisions when it misrepresented an employment relationship as one of independent contracting.
Queensland's Supreme Court has dismissed an accountant's claim that Clive Palmer verbally offered to pay him a $1 million annual salary for five years, finding instead that the accountant was correctly paid the $100,000 (later $150,000) a year agreed in written employment contracts.
Uncertainty remains as to whether electricity distributor Essential Energy can shift some managers and senior technical employees onto individual contracts, despite a FWC full bench overruling an earlier "scope" decision.
A chief executive has been awarded more than $3m after a court found that his employer's redundancy policy was incorporated into his contract of employment, but his off-sider will take home nothing after failing to prove that the policy became part of his contract as part of a "course of dealings".
A four-member Fair Work Commission full bench has ruled that the tribunal has the power to insert in modern awards a provision penalising employers for late payment of wages, but has left it to another bench to decide next week whether the proposal has merit.
A university did not breach a lecturer's employment contract or its duty of care by failing to make progress with complaints he lodged against his superiors under the institution's grievance policy, a court has ruled.
A five-member bench of the Federal Court has ruled that a company was entitled to summarily dismiss an executive employee for serious misconduct that destroyed the relationship of trust between them, even though it had moved earlier to terminate his employment on six months' notice.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has asked a Victorian Government agency to urgently review the way it engages workers, after an investigation revealed it might be "misclassifying" employees as independent contractors.
The Federal Court has refused to compel three employees to hand over documents to their former employer to help it decide whether to sue them for breaching contract and corporations laws, finding the company had failed to make enough inquiries of its own before seeking discovery orders.
Employee lawyers are reframing contract of employment claims to include a duty of good faith in the wake of the High Court rejecting an implied duty of trust and confidence, but face an uphill battle to entrench the principle in Australian law, according to some senior academics.
