A FWC full bench has spelled out that it will not extend the term of zombie Australian Workplace Agreements due to be axed on December 7 just because it is sought by both the employer and workers.
Virgin's groundbreaking bid for an intractable bargaining declaration is "the quintessential bargaining scenario which the Parliament would have had in mind when enacting the IBD regime", it claims, while the FWC has allowed the ACTU to intervene in the case.
A senior FWC member in extending time by one day says a hospital security officer could not have been expected to ask a lawyer or psychiatrist he met while on remand to "trawl through his inbox" to find notification that he had been sacked.
In a decision pointing to the circumstances under which zombie deals can survive beyond December's drop-dead date, a four-member FWC bench has extended a 2004 agreement by almost 18 months after accepting it provides "significantly" better pay than the award and that negotiations have already begun for a replacement deal.
The FWC decided this week to terminate rather than suspend industrial action at the Australian Rail Track Authority, because the parties' "entrenched" positions made it "unlikely any significant progress would be made" if it ordered a pause, according to newly-released reasons.
The FWC has accepted a 48-seconds-late unfair dismissal claim from a worker convinced he filed it just before midnight on the last allowable day, after conceding that the tribunal's online processing quirks might have pushed it beyond the deadline.
The FWC has found no justification for interfering with a union's "statutory right" to three working days notice of industrial action against an "essential service" energy provider, after taking into account a five-point "safety commitment" the ETU put forward in response to the employer's concerns about supply continuity.
A court has limited to about $100,000 the fines it has imposed on an underpaying, now-shuttered labour hire company after accepting that it unintentionally broke the law and that its embarrassed founder is "appropriately remorseful".
The FWC has granted permission for the Department of Home Affairs to lawyer-up in an unfair dismissal case lodged by a self-represented former employee who once worked as a magistrate in Serbia.
