The FWC has extended time for a BHP joint venture mineworker to lodge a general protections claim challenging his sacking over a failed drug test, but has agreed there is "great weight" to the employer's view that it is essentially an unfair dismissal application in disguise.
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.
The CPSU says it will recommend Bureau of Meteorology workers reject a new agreement offer that relegates delegates' access rights to a side deal and makes them subject to management approval, vowing in the meantime to keep inserting campaign messages into the bureau's forecasts.
In a broad warning to employees mixing social media and work, the FWC has found that a BHP Billiton mineworker was justifiably sacked despite upon realising his error quickly deleting two Facebook posts mistakenly asserting shifts were cancelled.
A February FWC full bench finding that a worker was wrongly denied an extension of time to file on the basis he needed a credible explanation for the entire length of the delay has prompted a bench to overturn another decision refusing more time.
Two big international direct marketing companies exercised control over workers who were engaged as independent contractors to sell products or solicit donations to major corporations and charities, according to documents lodged with the Federal Court.
The FWC has ordered a lawyer to pay half the costs awarded to an unfairly dismissed sales manager, finding he could have saved time and money by revealing on the morning of the hearing that his client would not press jurisdictional objections.
The Fair Work Commission is missing its internal deadlines for approving enterprise agreements as it copes with an increasing number of complex deals that might need undertakings.
Workplace Minister Craig Laundy has been granted permission to intervene in the approval of a new enterprise agreement covering the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade, despite the UFU's criticism of it as an "unprecedented hijack" of the process.
