Faced with "simply unsustainable" growth in its caseload, the FWC is seeking to improve efficiency, starting with general protections cases involving dismissals, up by 27% over five years, partly on the back of paid agents using them as a "substitute" for unfair sacking claims, the tribunal's president said today.
A psychic reader who earned just $25 in the final 12 months he worked on an online platform and regularly failed to meet its minimum hours of work requirement is unable to pursue his unfair dismissal claim after the FWC held he is an independent contractor.
The FWC has lambasted a law firm that over-ruled its client and filed her unfair sacking application in the wrong jurisdiction, then took an unreasonably long time to file it correctly, some 24 days late.
Fast-growing HR and recruitment platform Employment Hero made a senior technical writer redundant after it replaced the content he produced for its online "help centre" with "automated workflows and AI", but the FWC has declined to extend time to allow him to pursue his unfair dismissal claim.
An employment service worker caught out by a legal technicality has won more time to challenge his sacking, which he links to an allegedly "inappropriate" workplace conversation after a Sorry Day event.
An Uber driver who varied his schedule slightly but worked every weekend until he filed his unfair deactivation claim clearly demonstrated "some form of repetitive pattern" and performed work "on a regular basis", the FWC has ruled.
An Amazon Flex driver's late bid to challenge his deactivation for entering a home can proceed after a FWC full bench weighed the gig company's "confusing and ambiguous" communications and the driver's personal circumstances that included suicidal ideation and a sick wife.
In a case highlighting the "obvious danger" of relying on artificial intelligence for legal advice, the FWC has refused to extend time for a "hopeless" 900-day late dismissal challenge written by and filed on the suggestion of ChatGPT.
A former Matildas star and Olympian was not forced to resign from her job at a remote gas facility because of alleged "microaggressions" that included being assigned "non-complex work" and persistent references to "fellas" and "gents", the FWC has found.
Saudi Arabia's Australian cultural mission has succeeded in sidelining a Federal Court judge from sitting on a full bench that is reviewing whether it is protected by diplomatic immunity from underpayment claims brought by 45 former employees.
