The FWC has ordered the Reserve Bank to pay compensation after its "unnecessarily abrupt" sacking of a long-serving manager while he took leave, finding it led him to believe at the mid-point of a performance management process that he remained "on track" to retain his job.
Employers and unions have confirmed the gulf that exists over 'right to disconnect' laws that come into force today, the former lamenting a lack of FWC guidance on "reasonable" contact and forecasting "conflict and disharmony", while the latter hailed the new provisions as "reclaiming the right to knock off".
The FWC has cleared the way for the ACT Greens' former party director to challenge his sacking after rejecting the organisation's jurisdictional objection that his brief term failed to meet the statutory minimum employment period for workers at small employers.
After a hard-fought battle, a mining union has today won an authorisation to negotiate a multi-employer agreement with three underground black coal mines operated by major resource companies Peabody, Ulan and Whitehaven, but Delta has escaped its clutches.
The FWC has upheld the summary dismissal of a forklift driver, after he left work to avoid a drug test, claiming that he had an "accident" in his trousers.
The ETU's refusal to acknowledge that power network operator Transgrid alone dictates when emergency work is required provided the FWC sufficient reason to extend orders preventing certain protected industrial action for a further two months, according to a senior member.
A Coles worker sacked for "interacting" with shoplifters in defiance of company policy has had her one-minute-late adverse action application binned, after the FWC rejected her bid to "pin" responsibility on the SDA, while at the same time affirming that the deadline is not a "mere technicality".
The FWC has accepted a casual worker's five-weeks-late unfair dismissal claim after finding that the employer gave him the impression that his employment would continue pending an investigation, and then ignored any further contact attempts.
The FWC has late today declined to expedite Transgrid's application for an intractable bargaining application against the ETU, after the power company last week won a two-month suspension of the union's protected action, but lost its bid to block an order for production of documents.
Two recycling industry workers have been allowed to keep 30% of their redundancy payments after the FWC accepted that while their former employer found them acceptable alternative employment, it involved moving from a "nice, clean" office to a "dusty, malodorous" one.
