Faced with a "byzantine" and bewilderingly complex bid to recoup millions of dollars in damages, the Federal Court has found the CFMMEU organised unlawful bans at the Port Botany container terminal in 2017 but suggested further mediation on relief to take a load off public resources.
The FWC has brokered a three-month truce between DP World Australia and the CFMMEU's MUA division under which the parties will resume bargaining and adopt a "neutral media stance".
A small employer must pay almost $15,000 to a former part-time worker it sacked for rejecting an "inflexible" full-time job proposal the FWC concluded had been designed to "get rid" of her.
An accounts officer who returned from leave to find her desk had been cleared has been awarded $7690 in compensation for her employer's "callous act" in making her redundant without any warning or consultation.
The FWC has lambasted an employer's outdated views on marriage after it sacked an IT specialist whose husband railed against its managing director via team messaging application Slack, but nonetheless slashed her payout by $56,000 on re-hearing her unfair dismissal application.
In a reminder to employers to double-check before assuming a worker has abandoned their employment, a business must pay $7000 to an ex-employee after it withdrew his visa sponsorship over an unexplained three-day absence that turned out to be GP-recommended stress leave.
In a rare case, two former operators of a Canberra massage parlour potentially face up to a year in jail for allegedly providing false or misleading evidence to the FWC.
A company has been forced to reinstate a long-serving senior executive it sacked more than three years ago following his stoush with an HR manager, while also facing a bill of more than $1 million in back pay, long service leave, penalties and compensation.
A male worker and an employer that pledged to indemnify him after he was accused of sexual assaulting a female colleague have been ordered to jointly pay her $130,000 in damages for pain and suffering and for the company to pay a further $20,000 in aggravated damages, after it conducted a "trenchant defence" of the perpetrator, who took advantage of the young woman after she collapsed at work.
A carpenter who claimed he was forced to resign for his own safety after a company director threatened to "take" his liver did so of his own volition, the FWC has found.
