The Fair Work Ombudsman won more than $7.2 million in court-ordered penalties in the latest financial year, a 49% increase from the previous year reflecting more serious cases and courts' "growing intolerance for exploitative conduct against vulnerable workers".
Toll's failure to specify that it would not recognise a worker's prior service with a labour hire company has left it open to his unfair dismissal claim, with the FWC finding he met the minimum employment period as the transfer of his work established a connection between his new and old employer.
Class action law firm Adero says it plans to ask the Federal Court to make "common fund orders" in its other major IR cases, after achieving a significant breakthrough in winning one for a multi-million-dollar face-off with Airservices Australia on behalf of senior public servants.
The FWC has rejected arguments that the CFMEU engaged in pattern bargaining during negotiations over agreements with two crane operators, clearing the path for indefinite strikes to begin early this morning.
ABCC deputy commissioner Cathy Cato, who acted as the watchdog's leader when long-serving head Nigel Hadgkiss left last year, has resigned to take up a senior state public sector job.
A large employer that argued that it needed an external lawyer because it recently made its HR director redundant has been permitted legal representation in an unfair dismissal case that the FWC found will involve complex jurisdictional argument.
The AWU and other unions have failed in an attempt to delay the Fair Work Commission's hearing of Esso's application to terminate the enterprise agreement for Bass Strait offshore oil and gas workers.
The FWC has found a major civil construction company had insufficient evidence to sack for misconduct a worker it accused of driving a heavy truck towards a co-worker in a reckless manner on Sydney's WestConnex road project.
The FWC has found the RTBU organised unprotected industrial action at Queensland Rail in the lead-up to the state's River Fire Festival weekend and couched a directive discouraging members from participating "in terms that rallied" them.
