Sydney Trains' request for extra notice of RTBU plans to turn off Opal readers and gates so it could safely do so itself has been rejected by the FWC, a senior member observing that on the employer's own evidence it would only make any potential disruption worse.
The FWC has acknowledged both the work/family difficulties faced by remote workers and employers' challenges in managing employees scattered across the country in upholding the dismissal of a FIFO mine worker sacked for abandoning his employment after he left work without approved leave and failed to provide a return date.
A senior FWC member has lambasted an "incompetent" and "belligerent" representative involved in numerous challenges to vaccination-related dismissals, bemoaning that a regulatory gap prevented him from awarding costs against the offending individual.
The FWC has in upholding Telstra's right to trim costs by changing shift arrangements for its most experienced technicians suggested it review its HR practices to avoid confusion when such variations are made in future.
A court has found that a union official needed to bring his phone onto a worksite to protect the rights of employees he represented, ruling that a meat processing company unlawfully hindered him by refusing entry unless he surrendered it.
A long-serving former employee of a company that deliberately restructured to offload severance obligations onto the publicly-funded FEG scheme has had his redundancy payout substantially increased, after the AAT ruled that a "grand chapel" deal with the AMWU "grandfathered" generous provisions in an earlier enterprise agreement.
A foreign exchange dealer sacked after unwittingly becoming entangled in a $23,000 fraud will have his unfair dismissal case reheard after a FWC bench agreed a tribunal member found him in "serious breach" of a company policy that did not exist.
With the finish line in sight for the FWC's seven-year "plain language" transformation of its 120-plus modern awards, a full bench says the process is nevertheless an "ongoing exercise" and parties can seek at any time to address ambiguities and uncertainties in the instruments.
A law firm found to have breached the Legal Profession Act when estimating costs says it will challenge a 25% deduction to the sum it claims after settling one of several no win, no fee retail workers' class actions, arguing also that proposed exemptions for litigation funding schemes are unlikely to improve the plight of those who are underpaid.
An Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission employee seeking to combine working from home and carer's leave to avoid COVID-19 while he and his endometriosis-suffering wife undergo IVF treatment has failed to establish his circumstances are exceptional under the agency's agreement provisions.
