The FWO has filed a challenge to a Federal Court ruling that found a casual academic should not be paid separately for marking, after the NTEU urged it to respond because the decision "could open the door to an explosion of legalised higher education wage theft".
A worker who threatened his managers that he would set bikies on them and that he had "a bullet with your name on it" resigned in the "heat of the moment" and should have been given the chance to retract it, but the FWC has upheld his dismissal because his menacing behaviour amounted to serious misconduct.
A HR manager opportunistically accused a disgruntled employee of leaking confidential information to "put the blow-torch" to him over his dogged pursuit of underpayments, a court has found.
The FWC has refused to reduce a worker's 16-week redundancy payment after finding that when it comes to determining whether an employer has offered "other acceptable employment", assisting with identifying alternatives "falls short" of procuring a new role.
In a judgment that will ripple through a FWC case considering the way homecare, disability and social workers are paid for shifts immediately before or after sleepovers, the Federal Court has rejected FWO arguments that penalty rates should apply.
The FWC has restored MUA Sydney branch secretary Paul Keating's entry permit four years after he failed the fit and proper person test, accepting that his arrest for taking part in a peaceful Gaza protest did not sully his clean industrial record in the intervening period.
A FWC full bench has upheld the reinstatement of a wharfie who tested positive for cocaine, rejecting employer arguments that the Commission's approach to appeals is "broadly wrong" and should involve reassessing a case rather than searching for errors in the original decision.
On-hire workers employed by BHP's in-house labour provider and its external suppliers have today won same-job, same-pay orders, after a FWC full bench rejected arguments that the service provider exemption and a "fair and reasonable" requirement stood in the way.
Increasing the small business unfair dismissal definition from 15 to 20 employees by headcount would expose an extra 500,000 workers to inferior protections, while lifting it to 50 would affect almost an additional two million, according to an FWO report that says there is insufficient consensus across the IR spectrum to support any change.
