An employer's request for a medical certificate demonstrating a senior manager's fitness for work after an extended absence would have been unlawful and unreasonable if his contract had not required him to participate in medical examinations.
In a warning for employers about properly educating workers on workplace policies, the FWC has reinstated an employee dismissed for breaching drug and alcohol rules, because the major company failed to ensure its workforce understood a key change.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a long-serving Queensland Rail protection officer who took cocaine on the morning of his rostered night shift and claimed he only started using the drug to cope with the stress of a workplace investigation.
The FWC has finally brought the curtain down on a legal secretary's "spiteful" six-year campaign against her sacking, finding her "incredibly patient" employer had a valid reason to dismiss her after she blocked it from assessing her reasons for a lengthy absence.
The Electrical Trades Union is urging the Albanese Government to close gaps in privacy laws to stop resource employers routinely breaching workers' privacy with mandatory blood sampling before they are engaged, warning that the model is being promoted "as a standard step in the recruitment process in all industries in Australia".
The FWC has granted a worker a one day extension for his unfair dismissal claim due to the merits of his case, after he alleged his employer summarily dismissed him for a positive drug test taken during a period of annual leave, when its zero tolerance policy would not apply.
A worker's "unfortunate" comment to the FWC that "it is nearly impossible to injure someone when driving a forklift at 8km/h", demonstrating his "unsatisfactory understanding of workplace safety", has clinched a ruling that upheld his sacking, after he admitted to smoking marijuana the night before a collision.
The FWC has refused to further delay a sick legal secretary's unfair dismissal hearing after almost six years of adjournments, and will consider any further extension requests "vexatious".
A Newcastle-based church unfairly summarily dismissed a worker when it took the view that no-one vaccinated against COVID-19 could work for it because it viewed the inoculation as "the world's largest ever untested medical experiment", and retrospectively applied the policy to the worker without warning.
The FWC has reinstated a Sydney Trains worker who used cocaine while on leave, after lambasting the employer for not making it clear that it tests for use rather than impairment and for failing to take on board earlier criticism of its drug and alcohol policy.
