A fair work commissioner has extended time for a worker who drove 170km to hand-deliver his unfair dismissal claim, saying "unfortunate" is too gentle a word for delays that left the original languishing in the tribunal's shared mailbox at Hobart's Commonwealth Courts building.
A worker has been allowed to proceed with an out-of-time unfair dismissal application after his employer failed to tell him he had been taken off the roster, "dangled" the prospect of future shifts in front of him for almost a year, and led him to believe he remained on the books.
The FWC has made tart observations about relying on no-win, no-fee lawyers and agents in refusing to extend time by seven months for a worker allegedly unfairly sacked for disclosing a medicinal cannabis prescription for pain relief.
The FWC has emphasised its "high bar" for extending time, finding no basis to accept a general protections claim submitted at the last minute but received 16 seconds late, nor another lodged just four seconds beyond the 21-day statutory deadline.
With many self-represented workers turning to artificial intelligence to prepare material to file in the FWC, a senior member has articulated concerns after navigating an apparently AI-generated claim containing "evolving" reasoning and a non-existent authority.
A FWC member has taken into account an experienced lawyer's stray comma, an apparent formatting problem and the FWC's tardy notification of an issue in absolving a worker of any blame for her 35-day-late unfair dismissal application.
A university has failed to establish that a tutor's dismissal took effect when a lecturer removed him from a group chat, clearing the way for him to challenge his sacking, unlike a colleague also dropped from the forum, who has since lodged an appeal.
The FWC has refused to extend time for a worker who "misrepresented" the reason for a one-day delay in filing her unfair dismissal application, when she blamed the Commission for sending an email to the wrong address.
The FWC has lambasted a law firm that over-ruled its client and filed her unfair sacking application in the wrong jurisdiction, then took an unreasonably long time to file it correctly, some 24 days late.
In a case highlighting the "obvious danger" of relying on artificial intelligence for legal advice, the FWC has refused to extend time for a "hopeless" 900-day late dismissal challenge written by and filed on the suggestion of ChatGPT.
