A court has awarded a former Laing O'Rourke manager more than $1.5 million in compensation and damages after finding his sacking, for allegedly intimidating property owners during the 2020 bushfire recovery effort, unlawfully interrupted his career trajectory.
The FWC has upheld the summary dismissal of a forklift driver, after he left work to avoid a drug test, claiming that he had an "accident" in his trousers.
A Coles worker sacked for "interacting" with shoplifters in defiance of company policy has had her one-minute-late adverse action application binned, after the FWC rejected her bid to "pin" responsibility on the SDA, while at the same time affirming that the deadline is not a "mere technicality".
A FWC member has found no plausible reason for a boilermaker's co-workers and managers to conspire to have him sacked for allegedly drawing a p-nis on a client's fuel tanker, concluding that the more likely explanation lay in a colleague's suggestion that he simply had a "brain fart".
The FWC has granted a worker a one day extension for his unfair dismissal claim due to the merits of his case, after he alleged his employer summarily dismissed him for a positive drug test taken during a period of annual leave, when its zero tolerance policy would not apply.
The FWC has reinstated a long-serving worker accused of violent threats to a colleague, finding the employer's circumstantial evidence fell short and did not establish that the incident occurred.
A major employer has for the second time in a year been ordered to reinstate a worker after the FWC again identified fatal flaws in its investigation processes.
A worker's "unfortunate" comment to the FWC that "it is nearly impossible to injure someone when driving a forklift at 8km/h", demonstrating his "unsatisfactory understanding of workplace safety", has clinched a ruling that upheld his sacking, after he admitted to smoking marijuana the night before a collision.
In a case that yesterday earned a mention in Parliament, the FWC has overlooked an employer's reasons for sacking a volatile employee to find that his own evidence that he was "not right" to return to work because mental health issues justified the dismissal.
