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.
The Federal Court has pushed FWC general manager Murray Furlong's prosecution of Diana Asmar back to next month and asked to her to provide a neurologist's report to ascertain whether she "is capable of managing her own affairs in the proceeding".
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 first test case for the delegates' rights provisions legislated by the Albanese Government is set to be heard in the Federal Court in Brisbane next week.
In the first fully contested Federal Court case to consider new s-xual harassment protections in the Fair Work Act, a judge has relied heavily on a FIFO apprentice's dinnertime revelation to her parents that her supervisor asked her for a "bl-w job" to find he s-xually harassed her.
A judge has rejected a former employee's $2 million-plus compensation claim after finding her unlawful sacking was not "the cause or even a material contributing cause" of an alleged psychological injury and that she would have lost her job anyway within months.
A former FWO chief counsel-turned judge has taken an axe to the workplace regulator's belief in penalties as a general deterrent, expressing astonishment at its "staggering" pursuit of a $21,000 fine against an employer who quickly coughed up a $976 underpayment once a junior worker provided proof of their age.
A federal court judge has ordered a contractor and a customer to pay an employee $116,000 in compensation and penalties for targeting him with "h-mophobic and s-xualised statements", in "a very serious example of s-xual harassment at work".
The Federal Court has slugged a wharfie almost $10,000 for telling a colleague "You'll end up dead dog" if he kept escorting on-hire workers through a lawful picket during a strike at Fremantle port in 2021.
