Two senior corporate lawyers will resume their pursuit of millions in compensation from Super Retail Group after the Federal Court rejected their claims that an enforceable settlement had already been agreed, while a full court will soon separately hear the employer's appeal aimed at suppressing details of its settlement offer.
The FWC's edginess over small-cohort deals has come to the fore again after a member exercised his discretion to allow unions to insert themselves in the approval process for an agreement voted up by three workers, despite having no standing as bargaining representatives.
Qantas will pay $120 million into a fund to compensate about 1800 former ground handling workers for economic and non-economic loss they suffered as a result of the airline's unlawful outsourcing their jobs during the pandemic, though it is not yet clear how much each individual might receive or how this is to be determined.
A FWC full bench has advised a worker of her right to enforce in court a seven-months-late $32,000 unfair dismissal compensation order, after it ruled that a commissioner correctly understood that the company misinterpreted her "this is shit" curse in her "thick" Scottish accent as "I quit".
Unprotected industrial action undermines collective negotiations because it is "directly contrary" to the Fair Work Act's bargaining regime, Deputy President Gerard Boyce has held in his reasons for finding the UWU's "unlawful" picketing of Woolworths distribution centres breached its good faith bargaining obligations.
The FWC has refused an employer's application to stop allegedly unprotected action, finding that two off-duty employees' distribution of campaign materials did not amount to industrial action because it did not alter their performance of work, or disrupt other workers.
The FWO has further tightened the screws on franchisors after the Federal Court agreed that it fell to Bakers Delight to disprove that it is liable for half of a liquidated franchisee's alleged underpayments of more than $1.2 million.
A full Federal Court has dismissed a National Rugby League referee's claim that the game wrongly denied him an opportunity to pursue his dismissal dispute because his employment ended at the conclusion of an "outer limits" contract.
A court has found no basis for sidelining a lawyer accused of gaslighting a former Workpac employee who claims she lost her placement at Rio Tinto for reporting a colleague's s-xual assault, when her duties involved addressing findings from a s-xual harassment inquiry and a report by former S-x Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
BHP and Rio Tinto are facing class actions accusing them of failing to protect women who worked for them and their contractors against sexual assault, discrimination and harassment over the past 20 years.
