The FWC on rehearing a yard hand's dismissal application has observed his employer's lack of HR expertise did not wash as an excuse for the "disgraceful and grossly unfair" sacking, but slashed compensation due to his vulgar language and propensity to snap when frustrated.
The FWC has chastised an employer for failing to abide by "industrial fair play" when it neglected to tell a worker it would seek to slash his redundancy payment if he didn't accept an alternative role.
The ACTU's triennial Congress has endorsed a proposal for state and federal governments to enact industrial manslaughter laws, after maritime union leader Chris Cain told delegates that employers who recklessly kill workers should face $20 million fines and 20 years behind bars.
The Federal Court has upheld Qantas' right to refuse access to documents sought over a "leave burn" program for aircraft engineers, in a decision a union leader says raises the bar for entering workplaces to prove breaches.
In a significant decision affecting those in temporary government roles, the FWC has found a Federal department failed to recognise it was dismissing a "non-ongoing" employee when it informed him that repeated instances of disrespectful behaviour meant he would not be offered further work.
The FWC has given short shrift to union applications for a protected action ballot at Kimberly-Clark Australia, finding a cancelled meeting and a week's delay in securing a new date cannot be construed as being obstructive.
In a case in which classroom allergy management has intersected with IR laws, the FWC has reinstated an infants teacher summarily dismissed for allegedly breaching her duty of care when she gave an "unsafe" chocolate to a pupil, after checking its ingredients.
The ripples from a recent decision upsetting the authority on outer limits contract workers pursuing unfair dismissal claims have reached another jurisdiction, with the WA IR Commission ordering the reinstatement of a septuagenarian school traffic warden who had been "taken advantage" of by the employer.
