In a decision illustrating the challenges of conducting cases involving remote Indigenous employers, the FWC has awarded $18,000 to a sacked chief executive after failing to engage the respondent in proceedings despite 14 phone calls, numerous emails and five notices sent by express post.
In a shot in the arm for a paramedic transferred 350km away after an investigator found he bullied a female colleague, a full bench has ruled that bullying falls within a "spectrum of seriousness" and ordered the redetermination of whether he engaged in serious misconduct.
A senior FWC member has praised a "removed" former CFMEU construction division leader for answering national secretary Zach Smith's call to come out of retirement to take up a training role, granting him a certificate allowing him to return to work.
The FWC has found a cash-in-hand nanny an employee eligible to pursue an adverse action claim, finding that she did not have her own business and the parents of the children she cared for exerted a high degree of control over her work.
The FWC has made SJSP orders putting WorkPac and Skilled on-hire production operators at a Glencore coal mine in line for substantial pay rises despite accepting it might make labour supply contracts "wholly unviable" and result in job losses.
A full Federal Court majority has found that Orica is not obliged to make contributions to the black coal mining sector's portable long service leave scheme for its shotfirers, while Justice Adam Hatcher has demurred.
The RACQ was entitled to sack an employee repeatedly punched in the face by a tow truck driver after attending an accident, a presidential member noting a lawyer's question as to what the worker might reasonably have expected when he pushed someone from an industry not known for its "shrinking violets".
The FWC has pointed to a worker's knowledge of the 21-day deadline for filing general protections claims in declining to allow his late application to proceed, despite finding that responsibility for the delay rested "overwhelmingly" with his lawyers.
The FWC has "reluctantly" found that in focusing only on the positives an employer failed to adequately explain a newly consolidated deal opposed by one branch of the HSU but supported by its embattled Victorian No 1 branch.
A major charity engineered the departure of a "serial complainer" after the "intuitively odd" involvement of a specialist IR law firm, a court has found.
