A FWO bid to piggyback a compliance notice breach case with underpayment orders has been upended by a court, which observed that merging the two pathways would "undermine" the Fair Work Act's integrity.
A court has limited to about $100,000 the fines it has imposed on an underpaying, now-shuttered labour hire company after accepting that it unintentionally broke the law and that its embarrassed founder is "appropriately remorseful".
In a decision highlighting the difficulties that can arise from agreement clauses linked to awards and the NES, the FWC has handed back Simplot workers' arbitration rights for casual conversion disputes but removed mention of their entitlement to access permanency after nine months.
The agency that advises the Federal Government on the pricing of aged care says the FWC's historic work value case will result in average pay increases of 11.5% for nurses working in the sector.
A FWC full bench has rejected a farmworker's bid to scrap casual overtime award rates she claims prompted an employer to sideline her during a peak harvest period because she reached the maximum ordinary hours.
The NSW IRC has rejected a senior public servant's bid to suppress her suspension for alleged corrupt conduct, holding to the notion of open justice while questioning why she failed to make the application earlier.
The FWC has ruled that an employer's once-yearly payments to a worker to reduce his fringe benefits tax liability are not counted as earnings, clearing the way for him to pursue an unfair dismissal claim because his remuneration is below the high-income cap.
A Federal Court majority has today dealt a hammer blow to NSW's and Victoria's pursuit of employers alleged to have avoided long service leave entitlements to casuals, ruling that a tribunal's reading of the Fair Work Act's LSL provision produced an "absurdity" whereby employers received "no warning" they could be held criminally liable for supposed non-payments.
The FWC has speculated that an energy company in the midst of a $1.5 billion buying spree "presumably has a contingency plan in place" after rejecting its bid to have thousands of new employees covered by a 12-year-old deal that would leave some on below-award wages.
A full bench has vacated directions to make way for a care and community sector expert panel to consider whether to extend coverage of an education award to rope-in workers in independently-operated student boarding houses.
