Workers across a range of critical industries will be permitted to attend work despite being close contacts of a COVID-19 case, once they receive a negative rapid antigen test result, following a national cabinet decision today, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The FWC has declined to extend time for an unvaccinated worker who claimed he lodged his claim late because of the theft of 45 one-kilogram silver bars from his home, while it has upheld a nursing home's sacking of a maintenance manager who failed to comply with a State Government inoculation mandate.
The FWC has distinguished between "regular" industrial protests and those likely to attract "public outrage" during pandemic restrictions in finding a crane company entitled to sack an operator who attended a violent anti-vax rally outside CFMMEU offices in Melbourne.
A senior FWC member has invited "relevant authorities" to investigate a potentially fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificate supplied to an employer by a worker claiming to have been unlawfully stood down.
BHP says it will ask 35 Mt Arthur coal mine workers why it should not sack them if they continue to defy its vaccination mandate after engaging in a fresh FWC-assisted consultation process.
The Federal Court has today refused the TWU's bid for reinstatement of some 2000 ground-handling workers who had their jobs outsourced by the airline at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Qantas says it will put a new agreement to international flight attendants for a vote next week without the FAAA's support, after the FWC rejected the union's arguments it would be unfair after extended standdowns and while it seeks to continue bargaining.
A paramedic who claims an Ambulance Victoria IR strategist refused to permit her to take long service leave while she waits for the non-MRNA Novavax has failed to obtain interim orders stopping it from dismissing her while she participates in a group challenge to its vaccine mandate.
BHP says it is working with the FWC and the CFMMEU's mining and energy division on further workplace consultation to enable the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccination mandate at its Mt Arthur coal mine in the Upper Hunter Valley.
The key lesson from last week's Mt Arthur ruling by a five-member FWC full bench is that employers that impose vaccination mandates not required by public health orders must comply with consultation obligations, according to the coal mining union's legal director.
