A senior FWC member has approved an employer's request for legal representation in a dismissal case, but not before requiring hearings be conducted in private, that he be free to provide "appropriate" guidance to the unrepresented former worker, and that he retain the power to revoke permission if the lawyer complicates proceedings.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a long-serving handyman for serious misconduct that included continually touching a young receptionist, finding it was "understandable" given their age difference that she did not feel able to tell him to stop.
A health care clinic manager has failed to persuade the FWC that her HR-expert husband's representative error and the so-called "reverse synergy effect" resulting from her son’s concurrent unfair dismissal claim explained her application arriving 32 days' late.
The NSW Supreme Court has refused to grant an interlocutory injunction against a former SAI Global executive who had sought to set up shop at rival online conveyancing and property settlement provider InfoTrack and its subsidiary Perfect Portal.
In an inherent requirements case highlighting the need for employers to keep detailed records about return to work plans, the FWC has upheld the dismissal of a bus driver kept off the road for 16 months by a combination of nerve pain and anxiety.
In an FWC case heavily reliant on circumstantial evidence, a former soldier with an unblemished work record has had his dismissal for stealing company property upheld after the tribunal heard of airport mix-ups on a remote island, alleged union skullduggery, an upset stomach – and a dead bat.
The FWC has upheld under the small business code the summary dismissal of a manager accused of blackmailing his employer into paying an $85,000 separation package in return for him abandoning a proposed complaint to OHS authorities.
A court has thrown out an aggrieved former employee's bullying case, finding he could not substantiate claims of a "complex conspiracy" that involved a flatulent supervisor.
The FWC has poked holes in the record-keeping and training practices of an employer and its HR manager that summarily dismissed a long-serving employee for breaching its "zero tolerance" mobile phone policy without making sure he was aware of it.