A full Federal Court has found Qube Ports lacked standing to retrospectively vary expired agreements, clearing the way for the CFMEU's maritime division to pursue the stevedoring giant for millions in allegedly wrongly-deducted "gap" payments from up to 1000 wharfies' remuneration.
A FWC member has refused to be drawn into a dispute between a private rail freight operator and the RTBU over whether a remote locality allowance should be calculated on travel by road or "as the crow flies", concluding that she could not disentangle conflicting versions about its inclusion in an agreement.
The FWC has backed Ambulance Victoria's decision to transfer a "socially inept" paramedic 350 kilometres away after an investigator found he bullied a female colleague.
In a case that weighs up employer rights when conducting investigations under commonly-used agreement provisions, a FWC full bench has rejected a worker's request for an investigation report that details his alleged misconduct, but has suggested the employer re-open its probe because it denied him natural justice.
In a significant decision on paid parental leave, a FWC presidential member has ordered a State-owned public transport provider to backpay a bus driver who claimed to be the primary carer of his newborn son while his wife recovered from an emergency caesarean section.
In a judgment that casts a harsh light on agreement drafting, a Federal Court majority has described crucial elements of a multinational paint company's since superseded deals as a "jumble of random terms", before quashing a finding that six misclassified warehouse workers had been underpaid.
The Federal Court has this afternoon rejected a Qantas bid for a finding that flight crew union the AIPA unreasonably withheld permission to allocate newly-recruited pilots to its A380 super-jumbos.
In a significant decision on FWC powers, a court has found that the Commission can dig into a university's finding that an academic plagiarised a student's work to establish whether it breached its agreement's disciplinary processes.
The FWC has laid bare the difficulty of running what amount to underpayment cases against universities, finding in a union-run matter that not only did the employer have no system in place to reliably record hours but that the tribunal lacked the power to order compensation anyway.
