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".
A court has ordered the FWO to pay costs for its "very late" and unexplained abandonment of an underpayments case, while highlighting its failure to "grapple" with the case's underlying problems.
FWC general manager Murray Furlong has launched a new action against former HSU leader Diana Asmar, pushing for her to be banned from holding union positions because she allegedly took reprisal action against "several individuals" who made protected disclosures about the union's governance and financial management.
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.
A jury has found a subsidiary of ASX-listed Mastermyne Group guilty of industrial manslaughter over the death of a mineworker at a Bowen Basin coal mine, in the first successful prosecution since the Queensland Government extended the laws to resources workplaces in 2020.
A court has fined Woolworths $233,250 for denying three part-time employees standard rosters, guaranteed hours and overtime pay, citing a lack of evidence "at the corporate mind level" and awarding the full sum to the AMIEU to encourage its enforcement work.
A judge has flagged compensation of more than $600,000 for a former St Vincent de Paul Society senior manager unlawfully sacked following a "sham" HR probe, but declined to award more after finding she misled the court and exaggerated her incapacity.
Woolworths has been hit with another underpayments class action, at the same time it is defending a shareholder class action accusing it of breaching disclosure rules by failing to keep the market informed about the extent to which it has shortchanged staff.
