A presidential member denied an unfair dismissal applicant a fair hearing when he threw out his case for want of prosecution without a formal request from the employer, a FWC full bench has ruled.
A casual cook has been cleared to contest her dismissal after the FWC found she was caught between the competing interests of two workplaces in responding to the Victorian Government's single employer directive at the height of that State's COVID-19 outbreak.
In throwing out a constructive dismissal claim, the FWC has rejected a former Westpac employee's allegation that a "complicit" bank executive undermined the legitimacy of an investigation that exposed "kickbacks" she received for referring customers to an external broker.
Observing that "you can only 'lead a horse to water' so many times", the FWC has after nearly a year dismissed what it described as a former university employee's largely incompetent unlawful dismissal claim.
An FWC full bench has clarified the preconditions for employers being granted legal representation, rejecting a presidential member's opinion that jurisdictional questions are inherently complex and dismissing "bare assertions" about an HR team's incapacity to contest a case.
In a case likely to be closely watched by employers considering mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, the FWC will probe whether Ozcare unfairly sacked a long serving care assistant who refused a compulsory flu shot on allergy grounds, while the Commission has also weighed-in on the contentious issue of compulsory jabs for Santas.
An FWC bench led by President Iain Ross "made no attempt" to analyse how model and agreement redundancy terms would operate in conjunction when assessing whether 21 seafarers had been fairly dismissed, a full Federal Court has found.
The FWC has declined to hear an NRL assistant coach's late claim that his club unfairly dismissed him during the season's temporary suspension due to COVID-19, but has conceded that he might reasonably feel "particularly aggrieved" about his selection for redundancy.