A full Federal Court has more than halved fines imposed on the CFMMEU for picketing a crane company over a sacked delegate, while also binning orders requiring the delegate to personally pay a $3500 penalty despite it not being part of the case against him.
The FWC has ordered resources giant Santos to merge two proposed agreements into one, finding that parallel processes and duplication of claims would otherwise condemn parties to a "less efficient" bargaining process.
A FWC full bench has found in awarding rail workers an additional 1% increase this year and next that the State Government has no "logical basis" for its public sector wages cap and has never complied with it anyway.
The FWC has slapped anti-bullying orders on a gated community's body corporate and its treasurer who taunted on-site caretakers about their claim of "living in misery" over the Christmas period because of unpaid invoices.
In returning a worker to her job and restoring most of her lost pay, finding the policy the worker breached "might make sense to copyright lawyers and some IT specialists, but probably no one else" the FWC has cautioned that "employer policy documents and manuals must be accessible, understandable and reasonable in their terms".
Casuals cannot be "dispensed with" simply by reducing their hours to zero, the FWC has ruled, clearing the way for a worker to proceed with his adverse action claim.
The FWC has given the go-ahead to a scientist's adverse action case despite claims she "played" the employer by obtaining a reference stating she resigned for health reasons, before refusing to sign a release deed and initiating legal action.
A judge has blasted a company's request for no penalty for flouting IR laws, describing it as "one of the most extraordinary submissions, if not the most extraordinary submission" on fines he had heard in more than 15 years.
Stevedoring giant Qube has failed to head off a multi-million lawsuit after the FWC found it had no standing to seek retrospective agreement variations affecting dockworkers' pay.
An employer alleging a "rogue" HR contractor's misconduct robbed it of a chance to defend a supervisor's unfair dismissal claim has failed to convince the FWC to revoke a decision that left it with a $34,000 compensation bill.