A FWC presidential member has underlined that workers are not immune from retrenchment while on leave or working under flexible arrangements, confirming that operational issues warranting severance can arise at any time.
Mining giant Peabody has won special leave from the High Court to challenge a full Federal Court finding that it did not genuinely make workers redundant when it failed to consider whether it could redeploy workers to jobs performed by contractors.
Two recycling industry workers have been allowed to keep 30% of their redundancy payments after the FWC accepted that while their former employer found them acceptable alternative employment, it involved moving from a "nice, clean" office to a "dusty, malodorous" one.
Rex airlines group's administrators have retrenched almost 600 employees, making them priority creditors, but if they end up relying on the FEG scheme, they're in for a long wait.
The FWC has urged David Jones to improve its retrenchment processes, while opening the way for a long-serving worker to pursue an unfair dismissal case after the department store deemed her unsuitable for redeployment to an area serving "elevated" clientele.
The FWC has refused to reduce two FIFO workers' redundancy pay, finding that redeployment offers did not amount to "other acceptable employment" because they were given insufficient time to consider roster changes that would also have reduced their time at home.
Mining giant Peabody has asked the High Court to weigh in on the "critical question" of when redundancies can be considered genuine and the extent of FWC powers to determine how employers might avoid job losses.
The Ai Group has told a Senate inquiry that the jobs transition plan in the Net Zero Bill currently before parliament "treads on very sensitive ground" when set against the established treatment of redundancies in Australia's IR framework.
The FWC has "condemned" an employer for characterising its bid to redeploy a worker to a "substantially different role" as fulfilling its redundancy obligations and has refused to reduce his severance payment.
