Qantas has today issued a public apology to the 1700 former ground handling workers it sacked at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it accepts this morning's Federal Court compensation ruling and "will work to expedite the payments".
The Federal Court has this morning found that one of the 1700 ground handling employees who lost their job when Qantas unlawfully outsourced their work is entitled to $100,000 in compensation for non-economic loss, while two others should be paid $40,000 and $30,000, and has directed the airline and TWU to confer on payments for the rest of the sacked workforce ahead of a further hearing next month.
The FWC has made it clear that HR managers should not inform employees about company policies as a "tick and flick" exercise, finding an employer harshly sacked a worker who had no understanding of his unacceptable behaviour when he bullied a colleague for supposedly "sucking up" to their manager.
The FWC will consult further next month on its plan to determine applications for representation by paid agents before any conciliation, conference or hearing, adopted after a review of regulation of paid agents.
Nine Entertainment will implement an external complaint system and engage an independent external investigator to allow current and former employees to make anonymous complaints over the next 12 months while it reviews the "resourcing and structure" of its HR department, with the goal of eliminating systemic issues with bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and abuses of power identified in a new report.
BHP Coal and its internal and external labour hire providers are again seeking to draw a secrecy cloak around its bid to ward off same-job, same-pay orders on the basis that its OS entities are providing a service rather than labour.
The FWC is set to convene an initial hearing next week into the CFMEU manufacturing division's application to demerge, using legislative provisions passed in July that gained new urgency after then construction division leader John Setka's threats to derail Australian Football League projects.
In a case that underlines the Commission's challenges in dealing with self-represented parties, a FWC member has refused to step back from hearing an anti-bullying claim, finding that a worker's 18 grounds for recusal, including the "unjust removal" of the worker's advocate from a hearing, had "no logical connection" with any possibility of bias.
In a warning to employers undertaking investigations of workplace complaints, the FWC has ordered a mushroom grower to compensate a former harvest team leader sacked on the basis of "scanty" hearsay evidence and the "sheer number" of allegations about bullying and racial discrimination.
A full Federal Court has found Qube Ports lacked standing to retrospectively vary expired agreements, clearing the way for the CFMEU's maritime division to pursue the stevedoring giant for millions in allegedly wrongly-deducted "gap" payments from up to 1000 wharfies' remuneration.
