A leading labour law academic has expressed concern that the High Court's recent Rossato ruling "unduly swayed" a senior FWC member who found a casual worker's contract helped establish she had no reasonable expectation of continuing employment, despite having worked every week for 14 months.
In a ruling that shines a light on "haphazard" HR practices in Victoria's Health Department at the height of the pandemic, the FWC has rejected claims it did not sack a hotel quarantine worker and lambasted it for meeting production orders with redactions that rendered evidence meaningless.
In a significant decision clarifying when the FWC can deal with unlawful dismissal matters, a four-member bench has upheld a finding that a bookstore worker alleging discrimination after being sacked for refusing to wear a mask needed to prosecute her case in court.
An experienced tribunal member failed to properly apply the statutory test for assessing unfair dismissals before ordering the reinstatement of six waterfront shift managers, a FWC full bench has found.
The FWC has cleared the way for a worker accused of "disruptive menace" and assaulting the chief executive to pursue a general protections claim against his former employer, holding it could not delegate to police the task of telling him he had been sacked.
A nurse who is contesting her sacking for allegedly donating her employer's property to a charity has won an extension of time due to representative error, after her solicitor filed her unfair dismissal application five hours after the 21-day deadline.
In a significant decision regarding the statutory meaning of "dismissed", a five-member FWC bench majority has ruled that an employer did not sack a worker when it shaved almost 10% off his annual pay for disciplinary reasons.
A FWC member has applied the "well known 'duck principle'" in holding that a tyre recycling company suspected of phoenixing unfairly sacked a worker who complained about unpaid superannuation, before threatening to kill a director.
Building on previous decisions taking a worker's mental health into account when allowing late unfair dismissal applications to proceed, the FWC has granted a time extension to a seed picker ensnared in her partner's breakdown.
