The Federal Court has put the brakes on the $1.9 million settlement of a $65 million class action against marketing agency Appco, noting it would leave more than 1000 former fundraisers with "diddly squat" after the litigation funder takes half.
Forty-eight former Macquarie Bank wealth advisors have been awarded compensation totalling more than $1.3 million despite a judge describing as "rapacious" their claims about underpayment of various leave entitlements.
The Federal Circuit Court has expressed "hesitation and regret" in accepting that while a DJ was a casual rather than an independent contractor, his underpayments claim must fail as his work was not covered by an award.
The FWC has given any objectors a week to put their views on extending special coronavirus-driven flexibilities in 71 modern awards until the end of March, when the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme ends.
An FWC full bench has quashed a decision to reduce a $12,000 retrenchment payout to zero, ruling that the Fair Work Act's "incapacity to pay" provisions don't apply when the entitlement arises from a source such as an award.
An employer's failure to consult and consider ways to keep a worker on the payroll before it dismissed him in the days after JobKeeper's announcement rendered his redundancy non-genuine, the FWC has ruled.
A federal court judge has in fining an underpaying juice shop operator almost $35,000 flatly rejected "cultur[al] differences" as a mitigating factor, lamenting instead the frequency with which ethnically diverse employers exploit their own communities.
A 70-year-old childcare worker has been reinstated after a finding that she was forced to resign in the face of her the employer's "callous" direction to relocate to a distant workplace and accept a role change that involved changing nappies.
The "obvious impracticability" of sanitising a koala helped to justify a pandemic-affected wildlife sanctuary's decision to make redundant a worker responsible for co-ordinating photographs of visitors holding its main attraction, the FWC has found.
In reasons now published for extending COVID-19 variations to the clerks award despite ASU arguments they are no longer needed, an FWC full bench says Victoria's "second surge" in cases highlights continuing risk and uncertainty.
