Two food delivery service founders have won more than $150,000 in compensation after their sacking by a company chair whose "total disregard" for procedural fairness made it unlikely he would be swayed by HR advice.
An Amazon on-hire worker has been reinstated and awarded almost $15,000 after a FWC member speculated that her threat to go to the tribunal over the reaction to announcing her pregnancy prompted her employer to "circle the proverbial wagons".
A FWC full bench has upheld a $60,000-plus payout to a worker sacked after refusing to take a breath test, rejecting an employer's claim that the umpire unfairly denied its HR manager a chance to give evidence.
Unions have doubled down on objections to an Australian Industry Group draft working-from-home clause proposed for the clerks award, claiming it will create a two-tiered system, confound both employers and workers and violates new penalty rates protections.
The TWU has filed draft orders seeking a minimum hourly rate of up to $60 an hour for "last mile" gig delivery workers and contractors, but a potential consent position it has reached with some Road Transport Advisory Group members would set a lower floor.
Racing Victoria has failed to persuade the FWC to hold off considering its chief veterinarian's claims that it pressured her to declare horses fit to race, a member noting that while the case had "substantial overlap" with an adverse action matter initiated in the Federal Court, they would move at different paces and address different questions.
The case billed as the first substantive test of the FWC's new gig economy unfair contracts powers has been quietly binned, after a self-represented Uber driver discontinued it earlier this month.
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 FWC full bench majority has quashed a member's refusal to grant an intractable bargaining declaration for highly-paid deputies at a NSW coal mine, finding he wrongly considered that the tribunal's arbitration powers must not be "lightly engaged".
A senior FWC member has identified a paid agent's apparent "lack of familiarity" with Commission processes as a reason for refusing a worker's request for representation to defend his dismissal for alleged time-theft.
