In a significant judgment examining the interplay between employment relationships and employment contracts, the Federal Court has dismissed a major employer's appeal against a ruling it owed a cleaner redundancy pay after reducing her hours from full to part-time.
A pandemic-affected employer has succeeded in having redundancy payments to four workers slashed by almost 70%, the FWC finding its perilous cash position and obligation to remaining employees outweighed the impact on the quartet.
A judge has highlighted an HR manager's "opaque" attempts at explanation in deciding to fine mining giant Glencore for failing to pay a retrenched employee his full entitlement for untaken long service leave.
In what stands as a tribute to the qualities the FWC looks for in employers' legal representatives, an experienced tribunal member has praised a senior associate for "a masterclass in the art of advocacy" that avoided bamboozling or belittling an unrepresented bus driver.
The FWC, in contrasting redundancy decisions delivered on the same day, has agreed to slash the payment a small, pandemic-affected business must make to a worker, but has rejected another employer's bid to do the same for three of its former employees.
Sodexo's circuitous journey to a new offshore deal has taken another turn after the FWC gave unions the go-ahead to conduct a strike ballot despite arguments that a claim for workers to be provided only vegetarian meals showed they were not bargaining genuinely.
The FWC has found an employer's failure to consult a pregnant worker before abruptly announcing her redundancy to be the "very definition of unfair", rejecting its submissions that a series of meetings were adequate.
A company "motivated by malice" when it forged documents to cut the leave balance of a chief operating officer it perceived as "a thorn in its side" has been ordered to pay $250,000 in penalties and unpaid entitlements.
The AAT has rebuffed a claim of unfair treatment under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee from a worker who claimed she missed out on a redundancy payment because of her loyalty and empathy in staying-on with a failed company as its employee numbers dropped below the small business threshold.
