Catholic school employers have escaped penalties for withholding backpay from two teachers who resigned before new agreements' retrospective pay rises came into effect, a judge finding that the deals' ambiguities contributed to the "honest and reasonable" mistake.
In a significant breakthrough for a NTEU excessive workloads case, a FWC full bench has found a university could have breached its agreement by allocating tasks to academics they could not reasonably complete within full-time hours, but it is questioning what, if any, relief would be available.
In a decision upending unions' understanding of what constitutes the base rate of pay under the pilots award and undoing an underpayments claim, the FWC has held that it does not include general wage-related allowances even where they form part of the minimum payment.
The FWC has ruled an employer had a right to refuse to pay sick leave to a worker recently warned about his "particularly excessive" use of the entitlement, while finding it nevertheless "irrelevant" whether cosmetic surgery or a burst appendix explained his absence.
Trickle of FWC disputes over RtD; Lattouf leads court's livestream top 40; Victorian police bargaining dispute over after deal voted up; MUA loses appeal in "voluntary" work case.
After the UFU refused to comply with a FWC order to hand over a trust deed for an income protection scheme, the Federal Court has also ordered the union to produce the document.
The NTEU is calling for the FWO's "anti-wage theft model" to be rolled out nationally, after Sydney University entered an enforceable undertaking to make up more than $23 million in underpayments to more than 14,000 workers and Melbourne University did the same, for denying more than 25,000 workers a total of $72 million.
The FWC has declined to interfere with the ATO's decision to refuse a worker absent more than 248 days in a year access to unpaid personal leave, observing that its enterprise agreement did not provide an "unfettered" right to such time off.
Lawyers involved in "wage theft" class actions on behalf of thousands of junior doctors says Victorian public health services might face tens of millions of dollars in fines after a court found one of them "expressly and brazenly" instructed trainees to perform unpaid overtime.
FWC President Adam Hatcher has refused to stay an order compelling the UFU to hand over a trust deed for an income protection scheme that Fire Rescue Victoria claims might expose it to a $7 million annual fringe benefits tax liability.
