An FWC full bench has used a workplace determination to call on the federal government to relax public sector bargaining guidelines, at the same time as it questioned the legal standing of a major department's decision to "go harder" after workers voted down multiple proposed deals.
The FWC is seeking submissions on some increases in the work value of pharmacists identified in its four-yearly award review, but Professionals Australia has slammed the tribunal's rejection of its signal bid to bump by more than a third the pay of those with accreditation.
An employer who sought to "retrofit" a requirement for workers to have a clean police record should have obtained external HR advice to avoid unfairly sacking a storeworker over his criminal past, the FWC has found.
Seven West Media says it will apply to terminate an enterprise agreement covering about 1300 employees unless it breaks a bargaining deadlock, making it arguably the highest-profile employer to pursue such a manoeuvre.
Armaguard has been ordered to reinstate two security guards sacked for their part in a "string of failures" that resulted in almost $60,000 cash being stolen, the FWC finding that the company failed to take into account numerous mitigating circumstances.
A supervisor at Gina Rinehart's Roy Hill iron ore mine claims the company sacked him for making complaints and inquiries about his employment, at one point allegedly interviewing a former colleague he'd accused of assaulting him in an attempt to "dig up dirt".
The FWC has praised the "extraordinary lengths" an employer took to support a worker suffering from domestic violence before it sacked her for failing to improve her attendance.
Westpac was entitled to dismiss a premium client manager for putting customer service ahead of protecting their personal information when he loaned his allegedly troublesome work phone to a visiting relative and used his private Gmail account as a workaround for the bank's "slow" internal email system, the FWC has found.
The FWC has ordered an employment agency to pay 26 weeks' wages in compensation to a job placement officer it sacked for failing to declare convictions for Centrelink fraud, the tribunal criticising an HR manager's handling of the process while pouring water on claims that a clean record was an "inherent requirement" of her job.
An HR manager's "unnecessary allegations" and "overreach" have contributed to a finding that although a drug and alcohol tester's failure to declare he was taking Nurofen Plus provided a valid reason for dismissal, his sacking was unfair.
