The MEU is funding a class action against BHP for requiring on-hire production and maintenance crew to work public holidays, allegedly without making a reasonable request or telling them they could reasonably refuse, while the mining giant is challenging the legal principle at the heart of the case.
An accounting firm that knowingly misled a Fair Work Inspector investigating its exploitative cashback scheme has been ordered to pay total penalties of $177,000 by the Federal Circuit and Family Court.
A meat union delegate who has had hundreds of thousands of dollars in employer penalties paid into his union's coffers has added almost $90,000 more to his tally, this time from Woolworths.
A judge has questioned the FWO's "vigour" in seeking penalties against an "impoverished" dairy business whose owner is already struggling to make $300 weekly instalments to compensate an underpaid worker.
The FWC has temporarily increased the vehicle-related allowances in the SCHADS and aged care awards to compensate workers for the fuel price surge from the Middle East conflict, but has declined to make the change in 39 other awards.
A FWC full bench has refused to delay the phasing-in of junior rates changes, while rejecting SDA arguments that a six-month qualifying period before 18 to 20-year-old retail, fast food and pharmacy workers receive full adult pay should be based on their time under an award rather than length of service with an individual employer.
The NSW Industrial Court has found that a worker who started out as a "volunteer trainee" had been an employee and should have been paid, because he worked regularly and "meaningfully contributed" to the business.
In a case highlighting the judicial system's concerns about self-represented litigants using artificial intelligence, a judge has binned a neurophysiologist's "prolix" 191-page statement of claim and ordered her to "permanently delete" confidential information obtained from her former employer, partly out of fears it could find its way into the public domain if she is feeding it into AI.
In a judgment confirming workers can seek to recoup underpayments through the Consumer Law, the Federal Court has found Domino's responsible for short-changing workers by misleading no fewer than 300 franchise operators into applying old SDA-negotiated agreements instead of the award.
Aldi will be obliged to pay $26.3 million on top of $28.9 million it has already restored to 32,000 current and former workers it allegedly failed to pay for work before and after their shifts, under the proposed terms for settlement of a SDA class action, according to the union.
