FWC President Adam Hatcher has moved to reassure transport industry employers that the TWU's minimum-standards test cases for gig workers and "last-mile" deliveries will not be hijacked by an advisory group set up by Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt, promising "genuine engagement" and emphasising that the Commission retains control of the "deliberative processes".
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.
The FWC is set to convene an initial hearing next week into the CFMEU manufacturing division's application to demerge, using legislative provisions passed in July that gained new urgency after then construction division leader John Setka's threats to derail Australian Football League projects.
In a case that underlines the Commission's challenges in dealing with self-represented parties, a FWC member has refused to step back from hearing an anti-bullying claim, finding that a worker's 18 grounds for recusal, including the "unjust removal" of the worker's advocate from a hearing, had "no logical connection" with any possibility of bias.
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.
The FWC has taken the unusual step of allowing an employer's HR manager on behalf of workers to sign off on an agreement not backed by the CFMEU's construction division, after accepting evidence that employees were "reluctant" to put their names to the deal.
FWC President Adam Hatcher is seeking feedback by October 25 on draft same-job, same-pay guidelines, including on whether the Commission should publish them.
The majority privately-owned operator of NSW's high-voltage electricity network and unions have until next Monday to agree on terms for a new agreement before handing matters over to a FWC full bench to resolve any outstanding issues via an intractable bargaining determination.
