A full Federal Court has clarified the extent to which employers must investigate alternative roles for workers caught up in restructures, finding that a mining company had an obligation to assess whether employees could replace already-engaged contractors before making them redundant.
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
A tribunal has refused to extend time for a worker's three-months-late FEG claim but expressed its "sympathy" for the COVID-19 "chaos" and her employer's delayed notification of her entitlements that led to her late application.
A lawyer has been fined $2400 and her eponymous firm a further $12,000 after a judge highlighted her "unreasoned and unreasonable" belief that the FWO wrongly concluded that it underpaid a legal secretary.
The High Court has this afternoon declined to hear DEWR's challenge to a ruling that limits funds available to pay employee entitlements when a company goes under.
The FWC has reinforced its view that zombie agreements should not be extended "merely" because the parties are in harmony, observing that nothing is stopping a charity funded by Australia's orchestras from negotiating a new deal with its valued finance manager.
A FWC full bench has upheld the rejection of a mining company's deal after shortcomings in the way it was explained denied some workers a chance to cast an informed vote on whether to remain on the Black Coal Award and enjoy "far superior" redundancy benefits and a ban on casual employment.
A long-serving former employee of a company that deliberately restructured to offload severance obligations onto the publicly-funded FEG scheme has had his redundancy payout substantially increased, after the AAT ruled that a "grand chapel" deal with the AMWU "grandfathered" generous provisions in an earlier enterprise agreement.
