Penalties page 3 of 44

A judge has declined to bundle together an employer's various workplace breaches in ordering it to pay $163,000 in fines to a former worker for stripping his severance pay of more than 500 accumulated annual leave hours.

The Victorian Government, the State's Trades Hall and the ASU are calling for the Albanese Government to stick to its pre-election commitment to enact a carve-out in the Closing Loopholes Bill so that state wage theft laws can continue to operate.

Shine and RAFFWU are preparing a class action against KFC to win compensation for potentially tens of thousands of workers allegedly denied proper rest breaks, weeks after the Federal Court slammed the SDA over its approach to McDonald's rest breaks litigation and decided its case should run concurrently with an earlier Shine/RAFFWU proceeding.

State Labor governments intervening in a High Court constitutional challenge to Victoria's wage theft laws are arguing there is no inconsistency with the Fair Work Act that could void a criminal prosecution, in a case coinciding with the Albanese Government's plan to introduce federal sanctions of up to 10 years in prison and maximum fines of $8 million.

The High Court has today unanimously held that Qantas took unlawful adverse action against nearly 2000 former ground crew when it outsourced their jobs at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when their agreements were due to nominally expire.

A female Qantas pilot suing the airline for alleged gender discrimination and s-xual harassment must re-plead her case after a court found her claim that the workplace was "hostile to women" to be "unsatisfactorily imprecise".

The AWU's pursuit of fines against builders John Holland for allegedly denying an official lawful access to test silica dust levels on Australia's biggest road project has been put on hold, after a judge accepted that the FWC is the best forum to quickly determine entry rights when workers' health is potentially in jeopardy.

CFMMEU leader Michael Ravbar has been skewered with his second personal penalty in four months for "blatantly" breaching entry rights when delaying work at a major project to promote an industry super fund during unauthorised early morning barbecues.

In a powerful demonstration of the consequences of ignoring FWC recommendations, a court has ordered an employer to pay more than $50,000 in penalties and compensation after it failed to act on a commissioner's call to provide a teacher with details of an investigation before sacking her for allegedly tugging the earlobes of two students.

A judge has rejected a sales director's claim that his employer sacked him within hours of him telling his manager he intended to take unpaid parental leave on the birth of his two surrogate children.