IR Minister Kelly O'Dwyer's latest challenge to a contentious, newly-minted Melbourne fire brigade agreement is heading to the FWC for a hearing on Monday, with her bid for a stay order coinciding with the deal's scheduled start date.
The FWC has told an employer that it must accept responsibility for a "suboptimal" workplace culture that it could have reset before sacking two senior wharf workers who verbally abused a female colleague, but it upheld their dismissals for behaviour that "crossed the line".
A Sydney-based Canadian paid a regular monthly untaxed figure in US dollars by a Calgary-headquartered company for which he agreed to act as an independent contractor has had his unfair dismissal claim upheld, with the FWC finding he was not genuinely retrenched.
There is an overwhelming case for change to the Fair Work Act, but neither a Shorten Labor Government nor a returned Coalition administration are likely to undertake fundamental reform, according to Adelaide University Professor of Law, Andrew Stewart.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a bus driver who said he left schoolchildren stranded at a bus stop and told passengers to walk because he was too stressed to keep working.
The Police Federation has failed to convince the FWC that Victoria Police's plans to introduce afternoon shifts breach their agreement, or that the potential for frontline officers to "bear the brunt" of community dissatisfaction made the change unreasonable.
An FWC full bench has dismissed the CFMMEU's application for costs against the AMMA and MBA for their unsuccessful appeal against last March's merger creating the mega-union, finding the employer bodies' case "not unworthy of consideration".
A senior radio journalist sacked for referring to singer Michael Jackson's father as a "big, black b*stard" on air has been awarded more than $30,000 in compensation, after a senior FWC member found a recording of the exchange clearly showed it was not a racist slur.
