A FWC full bench has ruled that Victoria's fire chief displayed an appearance of bias when he decided to suspend two workers for allegedly accessing private work emails at United Firefighters Union Victorian branch secretary Peter Marshall's request.
The Federal Court has put unions on notice about what to expect from status quo provisions in dispute resolution clauses, tossing out the AMWU's bid for declarations and penalties against Opal Packaging for changing the way drug and alcohol tests are conducted.
The FWC has pointed to a Victoria Police branch's brush with the "red line threshold" for public sector service delivery as reinforcing the business case for rejecting a prosecutor's request to work from home on Mondays.
The NTEU has claimed a significant win for job security in the tertiary sector, persuading the FWC that the recruitment clause in a sandstone university's agreement favours ongoing casual and fixed-term employees over external candidates when permanent or longer fixed-term roles come up.
The FWC will arbitrate a dispute between a research institute and two former employees seeking redundancy payments, after they overcame an objection that only the NTEU is entitled to file the application following the expiry of their "maximum terms".
The MEU says its members at a Peabody underground coal mine near Wollongong have been "blindsided" by the company's week-long lockout of 160 mineworkers, saying it is a disproportionate response to limited protected action.
A FWC presidential member has lauded the Secure Jobs' compulsory post-PABO conferences that enable the Commission to "jumpstart" and accelerate bargaining, while at the same time reducing the incentive for unions to take industrial action.
The FWC has ruled that Coles unlawfully calculated long service leave payments based on a seven-day rather than five-day week, while acknowledging there is "room for debate" on the meaning of an "ordinary working day", particularly for workers with variable rosters.
In a shot in the arm for a paramedic transferred 350km away after an investigator found he bullied a female colleague, a full bench has ruled that bullying falls within a "spectrum of seriousness" and ordered the redetermination of whether he engaged in serious misconduct.
The FWC has found that an employer failed to implement recommendations from two bullying investigations conducted by the Ai Group and should now consider leadership training for the former manager of a worker who quit after the filing of the dispute case.
