An early childhood education trainee has won more than $10,000 compensation after the FWC found her employer had no reason to sack her by text based on "vague" examples of misconduct and failure to complete a qualification for which she had not yet been assessed.
A FWC full bench has upheld the reinstatement of a senior academic dismissed for sending "intimate and romantic" messages to a PhD student he supervised.
The FWC has rejected the unfair dismissal claim of a Workpac on-hire trades assistant shunted from a BHP Coal mine while on approved leave, finding it a redundancy regardless of whether the host engaged someone else in the role.
A fair work commissioner has extended time for a worker who drove 170km to hand-deliver his unfair dismissal claim, saying "unfortunate" is too gentle a word for delays that left the original languishing in the tribunal's shared mailbox at Hobart's Commonwealth Courts building.
In what stands as an object lesson in how not to handle performance reviews, the FWC has highlighted the role of "managerial cowardice" and a passive HR department while reinstating a senior academic who received an "exceeds expectations" score shortly before three colleagues formally complained about her conduct.
A worker has been allowed to proceed with an out-of-time unfair dismissal application after his employer failed to tell him he had been taken off the roster, "dangled" the prospect of future shifts in front of him for almost a year, and led him to believe he remained on the books.
The FWC has made tart observations about relying on no-win, no-fee lawyers and agents in refusing to extend time by seven months for a worker allegedly unfairly sacked for disclosing a medicinal cannabis prescription for pain relief.
The FWC has awarded more than $30,000 compensation to a "frazzled" truck driver sacked after admitting to smoking a joint a few days before returning a positive roadside test result.
A FWC member who ordered a meatworker's reinstatement wrongly discounted as hearsay evidence that he allegedly called his Pacific Islander colleagues "tree apes" and "black c-nts", a full bench has found.
