The FWC has declined to adjourn an unfair dismissal case despite a former Victoria Police employee's concerns he is constrained after exercising his right to silence in a criminal case largely reliant on the same set of contested facts.
Upholding the dismissal of an academic who deliberately stymied all attempts to establish her fitness to return to work, the FWC has found she treated the process like a "game of semantics" through which she could wear her employer down.
A senior FWC member has taken aim at a union for exhuming a member's five-year-old allowance grievance, observing that it risked its reputation by unenthusiastically pursuing such a "stale" and "obviously flawed" case.
The Federal Court has criticised the FWO over an "unfair" media release about an employer that discriminated against a pregnant sales executive by blocking her return to work, finding negative publicity a mitigating factor when setting its penalty.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a catering assistant who coughed in the face of a nurse taking his temperature on-site immediately before he began his shift at an aged care home.
In a significant decision on FWO investigative powers under recent laws stiffening protections for vulnerable workers, the Federal Court has rejected a franchisor's bid to have declared void a notice to produce documents created before the legislation came into force.
BlueScope Steel has for the second time in a year succeeded in challenging the reinstatement of a worker dismissed for a critical safety breach, an FWC full bench resoundingly rejecting a tribunal member's characterisation of the incident as "minor".
Days before SA's largest private employer is due to defend a class action on behalf of thousands of its convenience store workers, a tribunal has in awarding almost $65,000 in penalties to an underpaid console operator found it still at risk of non-compliance.
A church has failed to persuade the FWC that a pastor was not an employee when he was given an ultimatum to "repent" or be "released" from his role, the tribunal finding that his regular salary and leave payments for full-time hours indicated the existence of a legal relationship.
An "incompetent" HR manager's bungled sacking of a retail worker has contributed to an FWC finding that it was unfair, despite the employee's secret recordings of disciplinary meetings providing a valid reason.
