An employer that used the wrong company name in its bargaining notice has failed to convince the FWC that it amounted to a minor procedural or technical error that it should overlook when considering whether to approve its agreement.
A FWC member has expressed concern that a new model award clause preventing employers from directing workers to take unpaid leave during shutdowns will lead to more disputes over rejected annual leave requests.
A big employer's failure to give union representatives a "heads up" that it would impose a vaccination mandate did not necessarily render its subsequent dismissal of 25 workers unfair, the FWC has found.
A listed company's "extraordinary" admission that it failed to correct workers who mistakenly believed they had to be union members to negotiate a deal has torpedoed its bid to terminate its agreement.
The FWC has compensated a worker sacked for making "racist" comments, finding her employer's handling of her dismissal "appalling" and that it had been "very unfair to label her a racist person".
The FWC has reinstated a mineworker sacked by a Yancoal subsidiary for aggressive and threatening behaviour in which he threatened to cut a co-worker's throat, finding the dismissal harsh because of his unblemished 12-year tenure, his remorse and his PTSD.
In finding a worker with an oral contract an independent contractor, the FWC has affirmed that the principles of Personnel Contracting apply whether the contract is written, oral or some combination and has suggested that the previously-used "multifactorial approach" didn't necessarily cause "chaos", but created "legal and commercial uncertainty".
BHP Minerals has failed to establish that almost $20,000 in education assistance it paid to a mining engineer pushed him above the high income threshold for unfair dismissal protection, after it chose not to exercise its right to recoup the payments.
The FWC will permit a security company to use telephone recordings of worker's allegedly "extremely offensive" conversations with colleagues in defending his unfair dismissal claim, finding it in line with telecommunications interception laws and surveillance clauses in his contract.
