Mining giant Peabody has asked the High Court to weigh in on the "critical question" of when redundancies can be considered genuine and the extent of FWC powers to determine how employers might avoid job losses.
The Ai Group has told a Senate inquiry that the jobs transition plan in the Net Zero Bill currently before parliament "treads on very sensitive ground" when set against the established treatment of redundancies in Australia's IR framework.
The FWC has "condemned" an employer for characterising its bid to redeploy a worker to a "substantially different role" as fulfilling its redundancy obligations and has refused to reduce his severance payment.
A full Federal Court has clarified the extent to which employers must investigate alternative roles for workers caught up in restructures, finding that a mining company had an obligation to assess whether employees could replace already-engaged contractors before making them redundant.
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
A tribunal has refused to extend time for a worker's three-months-late FEG claim but expressed its "sympathy" for the COVID-19 "chaos" and her employer's delayed notification of her entitlements that led to her late application.
A lawyer has been fined $2400 and her eponymous firm a further $12,000 after a judge highlighted her "unreasoned and unreasonable" belief that the FWO wrongly concluded that it underpaid a legal secretary.
The High Court has this afternoon declined to hear DEWR's challenge to a ruling that limits funds available to pay employee entitlements when a company goes under.
The FWC has reinforced its view that zombie agreements should not be extended "merely" because the parties are in harmony, observing that nothing is stopping a charity funded by Australia's orchestras from negotiating a new deal with its valued finance manager.
