The FWC has reinstated a public bus driver dismissed after a road rage incident in which a vehicle was damaged and punches thrown, the commissioner observing that while the employee-employer relationship was "bruised", it was not beyond repair.
The husband and wife team behind a cleaning business have been hit with a record $510,840 penalty for underpaying three Taiwanese working holiday visa holders $11,500, a Federal Circuit Court judge dismissing concerns about their ability to pay despite an outstanding bill of $343,000 from a previous prosecution for identical contraventions.
The MUA is facing substantial penalties after the Federal Court today found it orchestrated unlawful industrial action at Hutchison's Port Botany and Brisbane container terminals in 2015, unleashing "every tool available" when confronted with "what it perceived to be an existential threat".
The FWC has confirmed the retention of existing Sunday penalty rates for restaurant workers, a full bench noting employers' inability to muster persuasive evidence to support claims cuts would boost jobs.
An operations director who claimed a biotech giant offered her a job "until retirement" has failed to establish that it engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct or that it took adverse action by retrenching her the following year.
The FWC has found a Coles Supermarkets baker who texted explicit images to a manager who responded "great d--k pic" did not sexually harass him as he appeared to initially take them as "a joke", but the tribunal has upheld his dismissal as his behaviour breached the retailer's code of conduct.
In an indication of the harder line the FWC is taking on allowing lawyers to appear, it has rejected a bid for representation by a large well-resourced employer with thousands of employees that claimed its in-house IR and HR personnel lacked sufficient advocacy experience to defend an unfair dismissal case.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a senior ETU delegate who objected to his employer's introduction of GPS tracking, finding he deliberately wrapped his device in a Twisties bag to conceal his whereabouts and falsified service records when absent from work.
In a ruling that underlines the Fair Work Ombudsman's pursuit of accessorial liability against advisors, a court has for the first time imposed a fine on an accountancy firm involved in an employer's underpayments.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency says "remarkable" growth in employers analysing their data for gender pay gaps means more than half now have formal strategies to address imbalances, but its annual scorecard reveals the overall $26,527 gender pay gap has decreased only marginally.
