The FWC has rejected a law firm's argument that a legal assistant abandoned his job, finding its director sacked him in a text message he composed with the assistance of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
An employer that sacked a worker absent on sick leave via an afternoon email has failed to establish she missed the deadline for filing a general protections claim, after the FWC held that she had no obligation to read it until she checked her messages the next day.
The FWC has urged the AWU to address its unfair dismissal claim lodgement processes after the union revealed its use of an internal case management system has again played a role in an out-of-time application.
The FWC has refused a six-day extension for a BCF store manager to challenge her sacking, but indicated that it might have granted it if a doctor who wrote a letter outlining her mental health issues had been called to give evidence.
Paid agent Supportah's failure to return scheduled calls and lodge a worker's unfair dismissal application, along with a family member's death, warranted a three-day extension, the FWC has found.
Inadequate award descriptors and lack of opportunity to progress through the award classification system have contributed to rife underclassification in the social and community services sector, a new survey has found.
The FWC has extended time for a late unfair sacking claim after accepting that the worker held off making his application because the employer told him that he had failed to serve the minimum employment period and its external HR provider and its solicitor then reinforced it with similar advice.
The FWC has extended time for a worker with "significant" mental health issues beyond the "ordinary stress" associated with most sackings, despite finding that representative error might also have contributed to the delay in filing her unfair dismissal case.
A supervisor's criticism of management in a social media group chat that "incit[ed] a negative and combative environment among the team", along with performance issues, provided a valid basis for dismissing her, the FWC has found.
The FWC has waved through a worker's late unfair dismissal application after accepting that it took seeing a job advertisement closely mirroring her role to crystallise doubts about whether she had genuinely been made redundant.
