The Federal Circuit Court has found that a company applied unlawful duress to three service technicians in 2009 when it set a three-day deadline to sign statutory individual contracts and threatened to take them off lucrative shift work if they refused.
A tribunal has found that an employer's failure to formalise an employee's flexible work arrangements to meet her caring responsibilities led to her seeing them as an entitlement rather than a privilege, and any attempts to change them as workplace bullying.
An employee who spiralled into drug abuse and psychiatric illness when her employer and friend sacked her for complaining about sexual harassment has won more than $100,000 in damages.
With Australia's new federal bullying regime set to take effect next year, the FWC has turned to the UK's national workplace tribunal for its experiences in dealing with bullying and harassment complaints.
An employee made redundant while pregnant has lost her adverse action case, with the Federal Circuit Court accepting a business downturn was behind her job loss, and rejecting her claim that her employer became hostile to her because she wouldn't commit to taking only six months parental leave.
An employee sacked for refusing to carry out directions he claimed would put him in breach of state law has lost his adverse action case, with a court ruling that while he was entitled to refuse to perform the work, he was not exercising a workplace right.
Sexually explicit text messages between two colleagues in a relationship were found to be inadmissible in an adverse action case because it couldn't be concluded that the "author would be likely to replicate in the workplace the content, tone or subject of text messages which were indisputably intended to remain private".
The Federal Court has ruled that a betting agency employee's ability to seek legal advice about unpaid commissions was a "workplace right" and that when she threatened to exercise it, her employer took adverse action against her by threatening to sack her.
