The FWC has declined to adjourn an unfair dismissal case despite a former Victoria Police employee's concerns he is constrained after exercising his right to silence in a criminal case largely reliant on the same set of contested facts.
Upholding the dismissal of an academic who deliberately stymied all attempts to establish her fitness to return to work, the FWC has found she treated the process like a "game of semantics" through which she could wear her employer down.
A senior FWC member has taken aim at a union for exhuming a member's five-year-old allowance grievance, observing that it risked its reputation by unenthusiastically pursuing such a "stale" and "obviously flawed" case.
The Federal Court has criticised the FWO over an "unfair" media release about an employer that discriminated against a pregnant sales executive by blocking her return to work, finding negative publicity a mitigating factor when setting its penalty.
The FWC has quashed an unreasonable JobKeeper-enabling stand-down direction that left the employer open to an employee's "accusation" that it sought to punish him for pressing to work from home in locked-down Melbourne.
The Morrison Government's closely-guarded IR working group process - which has included addresses by FWC President Iain Ross and fast food giant McDonald's - is nearing the point where it will become clear whether consensus can be reached between employers and unions on changes to workplace laws.
The FWC is considering COVID-19 variations to Queensland University of Technology agreements that include a requirement to factor in the pandemic's effect on employees' working environment and personal lives when managing performance.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a catering assistant who coughed in the face of a nurse taking his temperature on-site immediately before he began his shift at an aged care home.
In a significant decision on FWO investigative powers under recent laws stiffening protections for vulnerable workers, the Federal Court has rejected a franchisor's bid to have declared void a notice to produce documents created before the legislation came into force.
BlueScope Steel has for the second time in a year succeeded in challenging the reinstatement of a worker dismissed for a critical safety breach, an FWC full bench resoundingly rejecting a tribunal member's characterisation of the incident as "minor".
