A sales manager has lost her bid for an anti-bullying order after the FWC found blurred employee/friend lines helped explain a managing director's otherwise inappropriate comments about her boyfriend and supposed "Barbie doll" appearance.
The pitfalls of self-representation have been highlighted by an FWC full bench that found it would be "futile" to hear a former chief executive's anti-bullying case because his notice of appeal "expressly" indicated he was seeking an unnecessary order.
In a rare case of an FWC member standing themselves down, a commissioner has found that comments she made about the "vexatious" applicants in a discontinued anti-bullying case could lead observers to question her impartiality when considering a counter anti-bullying application by the original respondent.
A one-time star employee's anti-bullying application has been rejected despite acknowledgment of his "devastation" at being placed on successive performance improvement plans he believed resulted from unfair interpretations of his position description.
A major medical practice's former chief executive has had his application for a bullying order against two doctor-directors thrown out by the FWC, which observed that "short of storming the barricades" he had no prospect of ever meeting the threshold requirement of returning to his job.
A senior FWC member has refused to stay a former Sydney Trains employee's stop bullying application while he pursues reinstatement through the courts, observing that mud would "stick" to his accused ex-colleagues as long as the matter went unresolved.
In a decision underlining the challenges for the Commission in managing vulnerable self-represented employees in its bullying jurisdiction, a full bench has rejected an employee's claim that a tribunal member's procedures were responsible for her mental distress.
The FWC has cleared the way for a veteran's advocate to bring a bullying claim against RSL Queensland and 14 of its directors, after establishing that his volunteer services for one of its 240 sub-branches was in fact work performed for the constitutionally-covered state organisation.
The FWC has found that because an Adelaide council is not a constitutional corporation the tribunal cannot deal with cross anti-bullying orders sought by its acting chief executive and one of its elected councillors, but it says other councils might be trading corporations covered by its jurisdiction.
