A retrenched educator who rejected an alternative role because she wanted to keep working from home at least a day a week has lost her severance entitlements, after the FWC found she did not have a formal right to maintain her flexible arrangements.
The FWC has found that a mine superintendent who "supervised supervisors" is not covered by the professional employees award and his pay exceeds the high income threshold, rendering him unable to pursue his unfair dismissal claim.
A training college must pay more than $8000 to an accounts manager reputedly made redundant in anticipation of laws restricting international student numbers that never passed.
A FWC full bench has reinforced that a member did not expressly condemn using medicinal marijuana for pain management in a safety-critical role because it was not relevant to considering whether a council harshly sacked a worker who switched prescriptions to one containing THC.
The FWC has ordered former IR Minister and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's alma mater Xavier College to pay a teacher $14,000 for his unfair dismissal, ruling it harsh because he had never held another job and his messy desk, late marking and poor interactions with his colleagues did not justify his axing after 21 years of service.
In a decision illustrating the challenges of conducting cases involving remote Indigenous employers, the FWC has awarded $18,000 to a sacked chief executive after failing to engage the respondent in proceedings despite 14 phone calls, numerous emails and five notices sent by express post.
The RACQ was entitled to sack an employee repeatedly punched in the face by a tow truck driver after attending an accident, a presidential member noting a lawyer's question as to what the worker might reasonably have expected when he pushed someone from an industry not known for its "shrinking violets".
The Fair Work Act's compensation cap has operated inequitably to allow Guzman y Gomez to "benefit from its poor treatment" of a hard-working casual denied shifts while a HR manager maintained she remained employed, a senior FWC member has found.
The FWC has found it "fanciful" to suggest that an employer might allow a HR professional to send extensive confidential information to his personal email address without authorisation, ruling his serious misconduct warranted dismissal.
A casual Coles worker with limited availability has failed to overturn his sacking following a hiatus of more than three months, but the FWC says the store manager should have taken an additional step before dismissing him.
