An employer's failure to give a skipper an opportunity to respond to specific allegations about the circumstances surrounding a charter boat's costly collision with a channel marker did not provide sufficient reason to reverse his dismissal, the FWC has found.
FWC President Adam Hatcher has followed up his recent promise of "genuine engagement" with road transport employers sweating on the TWU's minimum-standards test cases for gig workers and "last-mile" deliveries by asking the Road Transport Advisory Group for more details on consultation timeframes, who it might include in subcommittees and how it "proposes to conduct itself more generally".
Listed services giant Ventia has been ordered to pay $25,000 compensation after failing to persuade the FWC it had reason to sack a senior employee it claimed divulged commercially sensitive information to its former national hospitality and catering manager over a lunchtime catch-up.
The head contractor on Queensland's largest infrastructure project has failed to win FWC orders to compel hundreds of subcontractors to cross CFMEU picket lines, with the tribunal finding their no-shows did not amount to unprotected action.
FWC President Adam Hatcher has refused to stay an order compelling the UFU to hand over a trust deed for an income protection scheme that Fire Rescue Victoria claims might expose it to a $7 million annual fringe benefits tax liability.
A FWC full bench has upheld the reinstatement of a Sydney Trains employee found to have traces of cocaine in his system, despite ruling that a senior member wrongly concluded that employers need to establish workers who fail drug and alcohol tests are at risk of being "impaired" before sacking them.
The FWC has made it clear that HR managers should not inform employees about company policies as a "tick and flick" exercise, finding an employer harshly sacked a worker who had no understanding of his unacceptable behaviour when he bullied a colleague for supposedly "sucking up" to their manager.
In a warning to employers undertaking investigations of workplace complaints, the FWC has ordered a mushroom grower to compensate a former harvest team leader sacked on the basis of "scanty" hearsay evidence and the "sheer number" of allegations about bullying and racial discrimination.
A full Federal Court has found Qube Ports lacked standing to retrospectively vary expired agreements, clearing the way for the CFMEU's maritime division to pursue the stevedoring giant for millions in allegedly wrongly-deducted "gap" payments from up to 1000 wharfies' remuneration.
An employer has won a rare costs order against an experienced paid agent after the FWC agreed that he should "never" have run a pregnancy discrimination case given there was no evidence the on-hire worker was ever dismissed.
