FWC President Iain Ross has refused to refer to a full bench "questions of law" from a health worker and a group of Virgin employees seeking declarations that it is illegal to threaten those breaching vaccine mandates with the sack and that a "non-covid injected person" is no risk.
The FWC has upheld, despite some procedural failings, the ACTU's dismissal of a call centre employee over Facebook posts that "cheered on" an anti-vaccine mandate campaign, applauded aggression against police, mocked domestic violence, disparaged black people and vilified transgender people.
A worker who unsuccessfully sought to take long service leave after Bulla Dairy Foods rejected medical exemption evidence from a since-suspended doctor has failed to establish it unfairly sacked him for breaching a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The FWC has taken Westpac to task for staging a networking soirée in a sports bar with free alcohol and found it appeared to cloud the judgement of a senior manager who touched a junior colleague's buttocks, but has nevertheless upheld his "catastrophic" sacking.
The Federal Court has criticised the ABCC's "misrepresentation" of evidence in pleadings and a media release, concluding the watchdog bore some responsibility for a subsequent report in a national newspaper that wrongly stated that a CFMMEU organiser made a "throat-slitting" gesture to a truck driver.
In a significant ruling on dismissals deemed harsh by the FWC, a full bench has endorsed the "unorthodox" approach taken by a member who ordered the reinstatement of a forklift driver who breached an employer's "no mobile phones" policy.
Mining unions have failed to convince a senior FWC member that BHP's vaccination mandate breaches the Privacy Act and that it would be reasonable to let workers confirm their inoculation status via the same check-in method they use to enter a pub.
The Federal Court has today thrown out an urgent interlocutory bid to stop Qantas Group dismissing more than 20 employees who failed to meet its mid-November vaccination deadline.
The FWC has "reluctantly" held that Airservices Australia's agreement does not prevent it from investigating the alleged out-of-hours touching of a worker's breast in a rideshare, despite dealing with it "to finality" four years ago.
