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.
The FWC has awarded $20,000 to an on-hire mineworker sacked after testing positive for anti-depressants, finding that more consideration should have been given to his "genuine misunderstanding" of the host's new drug policy.
The removal of a long-serving on-hire worker on her host's instruction after she mislabelled two boxes amounted to an unfair dismissal but the FWC has "reluctantly" declined to order compensation despite the labour supplier's failure to "go into bat" for her.
An asset management company breached the employment contract of an analyst accused of making a fictitious manual entry of more than $284,000, but did not subject her to adverse action after alleging its leaders bullied her, a court has held.
A dance instructor's refusal to take out the rubbish did not justify his sacking, the FWC has held, while his visa status has contributed to a finding of harshness.
