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 FWC has observed that an employer "is not a charity", in rejecting a claim from a former risk manager for an insolvent cryptocurrency trader that his award-covered role did not change despite successive $50,000 promotions over just 15 months.
The FWC has extended time for a Swissport worker to pursue a four-minute late adverse action claim given the "significant steps" he took to dispute his sacking, including sending unanswered emails to the company's head of Asia Pacific operations, global chief people officer and head of global operations.
The FWC has rejected an employer's claim that a company secretary's "time limited" contract merely expired, finding it gave her no choice but to give up her permanent role by making an offer "infected with misrepresentation, misleading conduct and duress".
A training officer employed on a fixed term contract can proceed with his adverse action case against a volunteer rescue organisation after the FWC accepted that it sacked him when it told him two weeks before its expiry that it would not be renewed.
The FWC has found it highly likely that a worker's Scottish accent contributed to her "this is sh*t" comment being misheard by her supervisor as "I quit", meaning the employer lacked a valid reason for her subsequent dismissal.
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.
In a decision sure to catch the eye of service providers using rostering apps to keep workers at arm's length, the FWC has found that a home care worker who signed two documents describing her as an independent contractor is in fact an employee capable of suing her employer for unlawful dismissal.
A Newcastle-based church unfairly summarily dismissed a worker when it took the view that no-one vaccinated against COVID-19 could work for it because it viewed the inoculation as "the world's largest ever untested medical experiment", and retrospectively applied the policy to the worker without warning.
A small not-for-profit organisation with no shortage of valid reasons for dismissing a finance manager who "disappeared" during an audit period has nevertheless been ordered to pay her more than $12,000 compensation after the FWC found its executive director should not have acted as "judge, jury and executioner" by overseeing the entire disciplinary process.
