A "wealthy" global sports company's mistaken belief that a sacked manager took unapproved days off has contributed to a judge finding that it should be hit with only 25% of the maximum penalty for taking three months to pay out his annual leave entitlements.
A FWC full bench has hosed down a commissioner's allegation that a failure to provide a worker 14 hours of "leisure time" bordered on "wage theft", but has upheld his finding that the worker should have received the additional leave.
The FWC is inviting submissions by June 11 on a "right to disconnect" audit of all 155 modern awards focusing on terms involving spans of hours, notice, supervisory duties, and requirements to remain on call, on standby or return to duty.
Lawyers behind an underpayments class action on behalf of more than 20,000 junior doctors say a $230 million settlement reached with NSW Health is the largest in the nation's legal history and represents a "seismic shift".
In a significant judgment on the FWC's powers, a full Federal Court has today dismissed a major hospitality group's claim that a Commission bench exhibited bias when it voiced its concerns about an already-approved agreement ultimately revealed to have been voted up by three venue managers and a payroll employee not covered by it.
A café owner penalised for ignoring a FWO compliance notice has been referred to a legal profession regulator after variously describing herself as a "Commonwealth public prosecutions Lawyer" and "Gov lawyer" in emails to a court.
A court has hit a former Indian High Commissioner with maximum fines for entrapping a worker in "powerless domestic servitude" in the guise of a diplomatic posting, paying her $9 daily to keep his palatial Canberra home 17.5 hours a day, seven days a week.
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
The FWC has identified 11 award provisions, extending to overtime, reasonable additional hours and on-call, that might interact with new terms to entrench the right to disconnect, ahead of the new laws taking effect in late August.
A casual real estate agent's application has spurred the FWC to vary the industry's award to clarify working hours and associated car allowances, accepting evidence that he had not been paid for the time involved in travelling up to 100 kilometres directly from home to conduct open inspections.
