A Fair Work Australia full bench has found a trucking company was justified in sacking a truck driver after a covert tracking device revealed he had purportedly been speeding on 24 occasions on a single trip, at up to 130kmh.
A federal agency has been ordered to reinstate an employee it dismissed after deciding her severe depressive illness meant she was medically unfit to perform her job.
Lack of regard for under-21s sinks agreement; Workers hired after notice must be given vote; Agreements must not include "inappropriate" common law duties and; "Conditional" employees cannot make agreements
Fair Work Australia has made a bargaining order against one of the nation's largest employers, the Commonwealth Bank, after finding it acted in bad faith when it awarded unilateral pay increases to its employees while at the same time refusing to put a pay offer on the table in negotiations with the FSU.
In a rare example of the ABCC arguing that right of entry laws were wrongly used against a union rather than by one, a full bench of the Federal Court has upheld the watchdog's appeal against an earlier finding that two CFMEU officials acted improperly in seeking access to a site to investigate an OHS complaint.
First there was FWA Deputy President Peter Sams's list of "dos" and "don'ts", and now here is advice to advocates from the other side of the bench. Jim Pearce from Denman Chambers has appeared before industrial courts and tribunals for more than 30 years, and his lessons learned along the way include not committing the "cardinal" sin of confusing the two; trusting your gut reaction; and waiting until judges/members finish speaking before telling them they're wrong.
A long-serving Patrick employee who won a compensation order after being sacked for fighting has lost the lot, after a FWA full bench rejected his bid for reinstatement and found the company was justified in summarily dismissing him for misconduct.
Licensed aircraft engineers employed by Virgin Tech - Virgin Blue's aircraft maintenance operation - will impose bans on overtime and travel for work purposes from next Friday. Meanwhile, resource sector employer group AMMA has called for reforms to further restrict unions' ability to take protected industrial action.
Unions must prepare carefully to resist employer challenges to their protected action ballot applications, but recent Fair Work Australia decisions could lend some assistance to union advocates, a senior union legal officer says.
The CFMEU (mining and energy division) is pushing Rio Tinto to introduce new flatter pay structures for its train drivers, in move that directly challenges the company's longstanding practice of linking pay to individual performance.
