An employer must pay compensation to a "pro-choice" worker sacked for missing a COVID-19 vaccination deadline after the FWC found that, unlike a colleague, it failed to afford her a chance to take leave while awaiting the impending approval of the Novavax jab.
The ANMF will continue to pursue a nursing home it says should be paying members for the time it takes to perform a COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test before entering the facility, despite the FWC find it unclear "what possible basis" existed to make such a claim.
The High Court will next month consider whether to grant special leave to hear the first appeal to reach its doors over government COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
A government corporation's HR manager had "zero interest" in discussing workplace COVID-19 vaccination requirements with a worker who justifiably raised the matter under an agreement's dispute terms, the FWC has found.
In a case involving one lawyer accusing another of being "either breathtakingly stupid or complicit in the ongoing fraud", a Federal Court judge has today refused to throw out an adverse action case brought by a storeperson sacked for refusing to wear a mask.
A FWC presidential member has issued a 10-point rebuttal of COVID-19-related arguments put by a sacked unvaccinated worker, to help her to consider whether to proceed with positions likely to be "irrelevant" in her unfair dismissal claim and that have been "emphatically rejected in numerous cases" before the tribunal and courts.
The ACTU has called for employers to "step up" ahead of the forecast peak in COVID-19 numbers by providing leave at full pay for workers who need to isolate or quarantine and distributing free rapid antigen tests to all employees.
Just a month after declaring its intention to delete "Schedule X" unpaid pandemic leave provisions, the recent COVID-19 resurgence has spurred the FWC to extend their operation in a handful of health and care awards, coinciding with the Federal Government reviving the pandemic leave disaster payments.
The bid by Qantas to overturn a Federal Court ruling that it took unlawful adverse action against its former ground crew employees argues that some of the Fair Work Act's protected workplace rights are "time bound".
The Federal Court has this afternoon thrown out the latest challenge to COVID-19 public health orders, observing that whatever else the applicant's case lacked, it did not lack ambition.
