In the FWO's first underpayment prosecution relying on race discrimination prohibitions in the Fair Work Act, a court has found a Tasmanian hotel and its manager deliberately short-changed a head chef and kitchen hand and expected them to work long hours, six days a week because of their Malaysian nationality and Chinese race.
A Federal Court class action against Chubb Insurance Australia Limited for alleged failing to pay minimum rates, overtime and penalties has been discontinued after the lawyers for the employees failed to secure litigation funding.
A court has found a husband and wife who performed largely home-based clerical work exclusively for one business before their services were further outsourced were employees rather than contractors because the company had an "undoubted authority to control" the relationship.
The SDA and rival Retail and Fast Food Workers Union have within a month of each other filed bids to terminate Domino's Pizza agreements, while the fast food chain says it has been increasing employees' pay via "discretionary entitlements" and expects to soon have a BOOT-compliant enterprise deal.
United Voice has launched Federal Court action against security giant Wilson, accusing it of unlawfully allocating overtime payments to Sundays in a bid to avoid paying correct penalty rates to security guards.
The Federal Court has overturned an $800,000 costs order against the Fair Work Ombudsman, after finding that a Federal Circuit Court judge was wrong to find the watchdog's unreasonable acts or omissions partially responsible for two company directors incurring unreasonable legal expenses.
Unions are seeking the reinstatement of powers to inspect non-members' time and wages records, after their analysis of 200 job advertisements aimed at Chinese, Korean and Spanish-speakers showed that almost four out of every five pay less than the award.
A five-member FWC full bench has ruled today that modern awards should enable casual employees to elect to convert to full-time or part-time employment, subject to certain rules and restrictions.
The National Farmers' Federation will argue the FWO has misconstrued the horticulture award's piecework provisions in a Federal Court case it believes has the potential to remove much of the incentive to work across the entire sector.
A casual pizza delivery worker who lost a "driver of the year" competition has failed in her bid to overturn the result and pocket $15,000 prize money after the FWC found it would be a "bizarre and entirely inappropriate outcome" and that in any case it had no power to hear the case.