A mineworker has won reinstatement after her sacking for revealing the email addresses of 850 workers in a fundraising blast, the FWC warning employers in the process about the need to maintain distance between dismissal decision-makers and those "involved directly in the facts" of a matter.
A FWC full bench has reinstated a rubbish truck driver sacked for a low-level alcohol reading, finding that the initial decision relied on reasons the employer had not put forward, without considering whether the driver had an opportunity to respond.
The FWC has ordered reinstatement for a professor who sent "intimate and romantic" messages to a student, including a photo of himself in his boxers, finding that his seven-year unblemished record since his recently-uncovered relationship mitigated his behaviour.
A worker who threatened his managers that he would set bikies on them and that he had "a bullet with your name on it" resigned in the "heat of the moment" and should have been given the chance to retract it, but the FWC has upheld his dismissal because his menacing behaviour amounted to serious misconduct.
A FWC full bench has upheld the reinstatement of a wharfie who tested positive for cocaine, rejecting employer arguments that the Commission's approach to appeals is "broadly wrong" and should involve reassessing a case rather than searching for errors in the original decision.
In a genuine redundancy ruling, the FWC has confirmed that it simply needs to consider whether employers have notified a retrenchment in writing, rather than whether they have provided notice in "the most optimum manner".
Drawing on limited legislative guidance and case law on instalment payments, the FWC has ordered an employer to split a $30,000 compensation payment over two months rather than the 12 it sought, finding the worker entitled to the "fruits" of his claim "in a timely manner".
An employer's request for a medical certificate demonstrating a senior manager's fitness for work after an extended absence would have been unlawful and unreasonable if his contract had not required him to participate in medical examinations.
A spurned TWU delegate found to have aired false bullying allegations against a co-delegate during a meeting at which he referred to him as "kid" and told him to put his "b-lls on the line" by holding a vote has lost his unfair dismissal case, despite his employer's procedural failings.
A training college must pay more than $8000 to an accounts manager reputedly made redundant in anticipation of laws restricting international student numbers that never passed.
