An employer that underpaid an IT specialist it treated as a contractor for 14 years should have addressed the "uncertainty" involved, but its misdeeds nevertheless fell at "the lower end of the seriousness spectrum", a court has found in a penalty ruling.
The FWC has ordered a BHP subsidiary to reinstate an unfairly dismissed former amateur boxer accused of aggressive behaviour, and deploy him to another mine.
The FWC has given short shrift to a part-time paid agent who claimed "other commitments" meant he was unable to meet a filing deadline, a senior member observing that the advocate's involvement had done nothing to improve the efficient disposition of an unfair dismissal matter.
A wharfie who tried to rescind a resignation he delivered while apparently having paranoid delusions has won a second shot in claiming Hutchison Ports unfairly sacked him, with a full bench finding no reason to ignore the facts that surfaced after his employer accepted it.
The FWC has wiped-out the redundancy entitlements of two visa workers who shunned an alternative role that would have enabled them to keep working from their shared apartment.
The FWC has ruled that a former CFMEU organiser is a fit and proper person to work for another union despite her "spur of the moment" decision to confront an investigative journalist that resulted in her dismissal.
A four-member FWC full bench has made a new same-job, same-pay order covering only the Skilled Workforce labour-hire employee classifications that currently work at a Hunter Valley coal mine, following a full Federal Court finding that the tribunal's original orders had been too broad.
The FWC has refused to stay a single interest bargaining authorisation for six Chemist Warehouse franchisees while an appeal is underway, because it could "derail" negotiations for several months, when the permit only stands for a year.
The FWC is proposing to quickly insert a far broader delegates' rights term in modern awards, following a full Federal Court decision to quash the Commission's previous "impermissibly confined" term.
The FWC has ordered a pharmaceutical company back to negotiations with the UWU for a first enterprise agreement to cover operational employees in non-managerial roles at its Brisbane manufacturing facility, after finding it breached good faith bargaining by offering employees inducements to vote against enterprise talks.