A discrimination case involving the Queensland Office of IR underlines the challenges employers face when managing employees diagnosed with severe psychiatric disorders, amid questions over whether they can safely return to work.
An employer had the right to sack one of the governing directors of its parent company after he chose to "go legal" instead of undergoing an independent medical examination to back up his doctor's claims that he could fulfil his sales role after a period of ill-health, the FWC has found.
The FWC has ruled that while a BHP subsidiary "imposed unreasonable deadlines" for a worker with bipolar to respond to and provide medical reports, it was entitled to dismiss him for incapacity after he refused to attend a "tie-breaker" medical exam to resolve conflicting assessments of his fitness for work.
The Federal Court has ordered a sacked senior HR manager to pay his former employer $45,000 in costs on a party-basis, after it rejected his AI-infected, meritless, "doomed to fail" bid for a judicial review of two FWC rulings.
A full Federal Court has found Metro Trains Melbourne discharged its reverse onus in an adverse action case despite its failure to call a workplace relations head and practising lawyer it approached for "IR advice" in the lead-up to a senior manager's sacking.
The FWC has awarded almost $25,000 to a former nightclub bookkeeper after finding that the company did not sufficiently remove her ex-husband and majority owner from the decision to sack her for mistakenly posting a t-pless photo in a workplace WhatsApp group.
A 20-seconds late FWC lodgement has been fatal for a worker who claimed her employer discriminated against her when it dismissed her for refusing to undergo an independent medical examination after she disclosed her neurodiversity.
The FWC has backed Amazon's sacking of an injured worker who refused to have an independent medical examination, while another employer's income protection policy has weighed in favour of finding it not unfair to dismiss an incapacitated diesel fitter.
The FWC has found an employer that accused a carpenter of submitting a "fake doctor's certificate" complied with the small business fair dismissal code when it summarily sacked him.
An employer remained in the dark about the extent of a worker's acute mental health crisis after she attempted to take her own life, and reasonably concluded that she had abandoned her employment, the Fair Work Commission has found.
