The husband and wife team behind a cleaning business have been hit with a record $510,840 penalty for underpaying three Taiwanese working holiday visa holders $11,500, a Federal Circuit Court judge dismissing concerns about their ability to pay despite an outstanding bill of $343,000 from a previous prosecution for identical contraventions.
The MUA is facing substantial penalties after the Federal Court today found it orchestrated unlawful industrial action at Hutchison's Port Botany and Brisbane container terminals in 2015, unleashing "every tool available" when confronted with "what it perceived to be an existential threat".
The FWC has confirmed the retention of existing Sunday penalty rates for restaurant workers, a full bench noting employers' inability to muster persuasive evidence to support claims cuts would boost jobs.
The High Court has refused a group of companies special leave to appeal a judgment in which they were found liable for underpaying workers by more than $1 million.
An operations director who claimed a biotech giant offered her a job "until retirement" has failed to establish that it engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct or that it took adverse action by retrenching her the following year.
A specialist anaesthetist is pursuing a public health service for reinstatement and damages, claiming her summary dismissal breached adverse action provisions, the enterprise agreement and her employment contract, costing her $40,000 a month in lost remuneration.
The FWC has found a Coles Supermarkets baker who texted explicit images to a manager who responded "great d--k pic" did not sexually harass him as he appeared to initially take them as "a joke", but the tribunal has upheld his dismissal as his behaviour breached the retailer's code of conduct.
The NSW Court of Appeal has reserved judgment on the PSA's challenge to a record $84,000 fine for contravening court orders and pressing ahead with a Valentine's Day strike in protest at the State Government's plans to privatise disability support work.
In an indication of the harder line the FWC is taking on allowing lawyers to appear, it has rejected a bid for representation by a large well-resourced employer with thousands of employees that claimed its in-house IR and HR personnel lacked sufficient advocacy experience to defend an unfair dismissal case.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a senior ETU delegate who objected to his employer's introduction of GPS tracking, finding he deliberately wrapped his device in a Twisties bag to conceal his whereabouts and falsified service records when absent from work.
