Unions have failed to convince FWC President Adam Hatcher that last year's legislation "protecting" penalty rates and overtime is "fatal" to employer cases seeking to vary the clerks and banking awards, with the joined matters referred to a full bench.
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A FWC full bench has taken the extraordinary step of quashing a five-year-old decision that left thousands of BP employees uncovered by an enterprise agreement while the company remained unaware it had been terminated.
In a sign of the FWC's growing frustration with not just the number of applications flowing across its desk but the prevalence of applicants dropping off the map, a member has lamented a worker's "disconcerting" failure to engage with the tribunal and the concomitant waste of valuable "time and resources".
Industrial action has ceased at hydrocarbons producer Inpex after it reached an in-principle agreement with the Offshore Alliance containing what the unions claim are "great" pay rises they claim will set the standard for negotiations underway for a new Shell Prelude agreement, while they have credited the FWC's interest-based bargaining efforts with hastening a resolution.
The "unprecedented" AI-driven rise in the FWC's caseload has now pushed average clearance rates up from less than four weeks to more than six weeks, and while the Commission is taking action to respond, it concedes it would be easier to "catch the wind" than to curb the technology.
In a decision highlighting the need to confirm an employee's intentions before taking an ambiguous or emotionally charged exchange to be a resignation, the FWC will continue hearing a farm hand's unfair dismissal case after rejecting the employer's argument that he quit of his own volition.
The FWC has refused to halt Inpex employees' industrial action, finding that the $15 to $22 million daily cost of a shutdown would not significantly damage the economy, or risk the safety of the Northern Territory population.
The FWC has ordered BHP's labour hire arm to reinstate a worker sacked for saying a female colleague had a "giga-chin" and a "fat -rse", finding he had no idea what the first term meant and that the second accusation, when reframed as "phat -rse", gave it a different complexion.
