In a rare case, two former operators of a Canberra massage parlour potentially face up to a year in jail for allegedly providing false or misleading evidence to the FWC.
The peak body for lawyers has taken aim at non-disclosure agreements, vicarious liability and work-related drinking in a submission to the national s-xual harassment inquiry.
A company has been forced to reinstate a long-serving senior executive it sacked more than three years ago following his stoush with an HR manager, while also facing a bill of more than $1 million in back pay, long service leave, penalties and compensation.
In a decision further clarifying the "minor procedural or technical errors" that can be overlooked in approving agreements, the FWC has rejected a deal capturing employees not contemplated at the time bargaining notices were issued, despite their subsequent involvement in voting it up.
Former Queensland assistant health minister Dr Chris Davis has won more than $1.4 million in compensation after a tribunal held that a health service's discriminatory decision to deny him a job because of his political activities and beliefs forced him into early retirement.
A male worker and an employer that pledged to indemnify him after he was accused of sexual assaulting a female colleague have been ordered to jointly pay her $130,000 in damages for pain and suffering and for the company to pay a further $20,000 in aggravated damages, after it conducted a "trenchant defence" of the perpetrator, who took advantage of the young woman after she collapsed at work.
Employers say the FWC's decision to forge ahead with model annualised wage clauses containing new record-keeping and reconciliation requirements – inserting them into some awards for the first time – will impose a "major red tape burden" while removing much of the benefit.
A university's decision to slash casual tutors' rates for online student support almost four years into an agreement has been endorsed by the FWC, despite the member observing that the deal's definition of tutorial harked back to his long-gone days at law school.
Employers should be subject to a stronger onus to prevent s-xual harassment under the existing positive duty to provide safe workplaces under OHS laws, while the Fair Work Act should be amended to include explicit anti-harassment rights, according to Victoria Legal Aid.
A carpenter who claimed he was forced to resign for his own safety after a company director threatened to "take" his liver did so of his own volition, the FWC has found.
