In a significant ruling on calculating academics' payments for time spent marking course work, a Federal Court has found the FWO's compliance notice served on an allegedly underpaying private university "bad at law".
The FWC has found that a mine superintendent who "supervised supervisors" is not covered by the professional employees award and his pay exceeds the high income threshold, rendering him unable to pursue his unfair dismissal claim.
A full Federal Court majority has found that Orica is not obliged to make contributions to the black coal mining sector's portable long service leave scheme for its shotfirers, while Justice Adam Hatcher has demurred.
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 MEU has opened up another front in its continuing battles with BHP, claiming in a new Federal Court case that the mining giant is breaching award provisions by failing to give its Operations Services in-house labour hire workforce Christmas and Boxing Day off and not seeking majority support for regular shifts in excess of 10 hours.
The FWC has observed that an employer "is not a charity", in rejecting a claim from a former risk manager for an insolvent cryptocurrency trader that his award-covered role did not change despite successive $50,000 promotions over just 15 months.
Woolworths has failed in its bid to vary the Retail Award to "clarify" that the instrument covers its burgeoning online fulfilment operations, avoiding potentially significant knock-on effects for the e-commerce, road transport and distribution industries.
In a decision highlighting the difficulties that can arise from agreement clauses linked to awards and the NES, the FWC has handed back Simplot workers' arbitration rights for casual conversion disputes but removed mention of their entitlement to access permanency after nine months.
The NSW IRC has rejected a senior public servant's bid to suppress her suspension for alleged corrupt conduct, holding to the notion of open justice while questioning why she failed to make the application earlier.
A Federal Court majority has today dealt a hammer blow to NSW's and Victoria's pursuit of employers alleged to have avoided long service leave entitlements to casuals, ruling that a tribunal's reading of the Fair Work Act's LSL provision produced an "absurdity" whereby employers received "no warning" they could be held criminally liable for supposed non-payments.
