A union member acting as a maintenance contractor's health and safety representative has won interim reinstatement while the Federal Court weighs claims that the company sacked him for raising complaints about everything from silica dust exposure to welding fumes and fatigue management.
The FWC has found employer unfairly dismissed a worker when it cut his shifts after he took up work at a competing branch of the same franchise, because it wanted workers committed to the "awesomeness" of the business.
A transport company is to be referred to the FWO over its "alarming" indifference to its obligations as an employer, after an unfair dismissal case in which it exhibited "disregard" for the FWC before being ordered to pay $30,000 to a former worker sacked without warning.
An employer must pay more than $30,000 compensation to a manager sacked over suspicions that he was taking it for a ride over sick leave, a fact only revealed under questioning by a FWC member.
An employer failed to "adhere to basic standards of decency" when it made an employee on parental leave redundant in an email, without consultation, in "a case that exemplifies the benefits" of having some form of "keeping in touch" system during parental leave, the FWC has found.
A tribunal has ordered the reinstatement of a council worker found to have had a "brain snap" when he referred to his manager in a text as a "rude c--t" he felt like punching.
The Los Angeles-based HR manager for the Melbourne subsidiary of a Chinese hot pot chain did not apply enough rigour to investigating claims about a "knife-wielding" chef before sacking her for a second time, the FWC has found.
In a warning to employers about ambiguous drug and alcohol policies, the FWC has in a 50-page decision highlighted the "inadequacy" of a multinational company's code as being among the reasons for reinstating a wharfie sacked for cocaine use.
In a decision weighing how close to "perfection" an employee's standards need to be, the FWC has upheld the sacking of an experienced scientist accused of "manipulating" data for a single BHP soil sample among thousands he helped test.
A large childcare operator has been ordered to pay more than $8000 compensation to a sacked worker falsely accused of telling a parent about her tenuous visa status in supposed breach of a company policy found by the FWC to impose no constraint on such interactions.
