The CFMEU and its former construction and general division Queensland branch president David Hanna have been fined more than $37,000 for threatening to continue industrial action against a construction company unless it agreed to a secret deal, with the court finding the union had a boundless disregard for the law.
An employer must pay its former chief information officer more than $200,000 in interest on a $477,400 payout plus partial indemnity costs after it failed to convince Victoria's Court of Appeal that three offers of compromise it rejected in 2013 were not genuine.
The Federal Court has awarded a ship's officer $100 in nominal damages for her employer's breach of her employment contract, finding it could not have foreseen that its flawed investigation of allegations she was bullied by her captain would lead her to stop working in the maritime industry altogether.
Victoria's Court of Appeal has awarded a chief information officer more than $477,000 because his employer failed to honour a verbal agreement about his entitlements.
The FWC has found a roof tiler is an employee who can make an unfair dismissal claim, ruling his employer created an independent contracting "façade" to suit its own purposes and avoid paying his entitlements.
A court has ordered ANZ, its former chief executive Philip Chronican and two other bank executives, including its chief HR officer, to pay the costs of part of a case brought by an employee who alleged they failed to make reasonable adjustments during her pregnancy.
The CFMEU construction and general division's Victorian branch spent $13.1 million on legal costs in the 12 months to the end of last year, up more than five-fold from $2.3 million in 2014.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal has increased a damages payout to a casual marine researcher who lost his job at a Queensland university after a government agency disclosed to a News Corp publication that he had been caught and fined for fishing in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
An FWC full bench has expressed "grave reservations" about a member's assessment of compensation for a dismissed worker, in a case that illustrates the limits to the assistance the tribunal can extend to self-represented litigants.
In a decision that canvasses how much assistance the FWC should provide to unrepresented parties, a full Federal Court has found an employer was not denied procedural fairness when the FWC dismissed an appeal notice that was more "diatribe" than pleading and didn't tell the employer to fix it.
