A Melbourne stockbroking firm and its founder have been hit with compensation orders and penalties totalling more than $600,000, a Federal Court judge also directing them to cover the legal costs of two former advisors forced to defend "fanciful" claims their departure "destroyed" the business.
A law firm that forced a solicitor to work "self-evidently excessive" hours and "deprived her of any form of personal autonomy or agency without any rational justification" has been ordered to pay her $50,000 in fines and interest.
The FWC has found it "fanciful" to suggest that an employer might allow a HR professional to send extensive confidential information to his personal email address without authorisation, ruling his serious misconduct warranted dismissal.
"Offboarding" a worker and processing her "final pay" before she went on holiday did not amount to a termination of employment, the FWC has ruled, because although the term "superficially" indicates dismissal, the worker failed to consider the circumstances of her labour-hire arrangement.
In further fruits from efforts to organise in the Pilbara, workers at two power stations will gain a 4.3% to 12.6% pay uplift and better conditions under their first union deal.
The FWC has rejected an individual bargaining representative's bid for an intractable bargaining declaration after finding negotiations with a major transport operator have merely "stalled" and are not yet at a stalemate.
A pregnant lawyer who filed her adverse action application before her dismissal took effect will get a chance to pursue her claim, after the FWC waived the "irregularity" to save both parties the cost and time involved in dealing with a fresh application that would have been filed late.
A casual Coles worker with limited availability has failed to overturn his sacking following a hiatus of more than three months, but the FWC says the store manager should have taken an additional step before dismissing him.
A listed gold producer has succeeded in halving a mine caretaker's redundancy pay after the FWC found that it trimmed the "uncomfortable" responsibilities in a proposed alternative role to the point where it almost mirrored his existing job.
A FWC full bench has axed an 11-year-old deal that excluded minimum engagement periods for casuals, finding that it must terminate agreements if their continued operation would be unfair to "any" rather than all covered employees.
