A charity ordered to compensate a retrenched financial analyst has been reminded by the FWC that consultation involves "not merely telling a worker" they have been made redundant months after deciding to restructure their team.
In a significant decision on FWC powers, a court has found that the Commission can dig into a university's finding that an academic plagiarised a student's work to establish whether it breached its agreement's disciplinary processes.
A FWC presidential member is today training the CPSU and the FWO in using an interest-based approach to employee consultations, using the Collaborative Approaches program spearheaded by current Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth when she served as a deputy president of the tribunal.
A tribunal member has torn up his own certificate sending an adverse action case to court after accepting he prematurely found that efforts to resolve the matter had been exhausted.
An employer that sacked a worker absent on sick leave via an afternoon email has failed to establish she missed the deadline for filing a general protections claim, after the FWC held that she had no obligation to read it until she checked her messages the next day.
A major employer has for the second time in a year been ordered to reinstate a worker after the FWC again identified fatal flaws in its investigation processes.
The FWC has laid bare the difficulty of running what amount to underpayment cases against universities, finding in a union-run matter that not only did the employer have no system in place to reliably record hours but that the tribunal lacked the power to order compensation anyway.
Unions locked in the Wilmar Sugar dispute say they have held over an urgent application to stay a ban on protected action, ahead of a FWC full bench appeal on Friday.
Parties involved in the FWC's consideration of gender undervaluation in five care and community sector awards will have a chance to agree on a methodology for assessing work value at a conference next Monday.
