A database manager's "wise" choice at the time not to challenge his summary sacking for falsifying timesheets contrasted with his "ill advised" decision to contest it in the FWC, a tribunal member has observed.
An early childhood education trainee has won more than $10,000 compensation after the FWC found her employer had no reason to sack her by text based on "vague" examples of misconduct and failure to complete a qualification for which she had not yet been assessed.
A FWC full bench has upheld the reinstatement of a senior academic dismissed for sending "intimate and romantic" messages to a PhD student he supervised.
In what stands as an object lesson in how not to handle performance reviews, the FWC has highlighted the role of "managerial cowardice" and a passive HR department while reinstating a senior academic who received an "exceeds expectations" score shortly before three colleagues formally complained about her conduct.
The FWC has awarded more than $30,000 compensation to a "frazzled" truck driver sacked after admitting to smoking a joint a few days before returning a positive roadside test result.
A FWC member who ordered a meatworker's reinstatement wrongly discounted as hearsay evidence that he allegedly called his Pacific Islander colleagues "tree apes" and "black c-nts", a full bench has found.
The FWC has awarded $15,000 compensation to a couple sacked within hours of each other for allegedly bullying the same manager by invoking a "summoning ritual" involving a pentagram and rubber ducks, and "mocking" her in a workplace chat group.
A senior FWC member has tripled the compensation sought by a worker sacked after her mother called the employer to convey in "abrupt and firm" tones that it should stop insisting on documentary evidence of a close relative's sudden death before paying bereavement leave.
