A judge has compiled a checklist for workers pursuing employers over unreasonable hours, highlighting the difficulties a product marketing manager faces in building her adverse action case without detailed evidence of workloads, deadlines and demands to complete tasks.
The use of rolling fixed-term contracts in the tertiary education sector is set to come under close scrutiny by a FWC full bench, while the tribunal has also moved ahead with its review of two arts sector awards in the wake of its inconclusive "targeted" examination of modern awards.
The FWC has cleared the way for a Philippines-based paralegal to pursue her unfair dismissal claim, finding her an employee of a Queensland law firm that paid her $12 an hour below award.
A full bench comprising the FWC's three most senior members has made same-job, same-pay orders that will increase wages for one labour supplier's workers at a Queensland meatworks by about 25% and provide "significantly higher rates" for a second supplier's workers at the same workplace.
An account manager who helped to lure 45 clients to a rival has been ordered to pay $500,000 to his former employer, after a judge highlighted the difficulty of gathering evidence in a case in which one of the manager's mobile phones surfaced after being "immersed in water" and another "met with the unhappy fate of being run over by a lawn mower".
The FWC has refused to extend an entry permit for a CFMEU construction and general division Victorian branch Indigenous Organiser who is facing "very serious" charges of threats to kill and inflict serious injury, while it has foreshadowed that the process for considering his application for a new permit is "unlikely to be a straightforward one".
A court has ordered long-serving Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association secretary Steve Purvinas to pay indemnity costs - expected to reach six figures - for his vexatious rules case that sought to wreak havoc against union executive members and embarrass and harass them.
A federal court has confirmed that the CFMEU's construction division is not the only industry participant deserving of scrutiny, factoring-in a builder's lack of remorse into penalties imposed for blocking a union official's attempt to check on potentially dangerous electrical boards.
A senior FWC member has highlighted a labour hire "dilemma" raising "obvious policy issues for government", while finding an employer did not dismiss a worker who alleged he had been sacked for taking medical marijuana.
