The ASX-listed law firm Slater & Gordon has announced plans to cut more than 90 jobs, close 10 offices and relocate others to cut costs as part of a "business-wide transformation plan".
In the first test of whether Queensland's laws regulating peaceful assemblies can be used to block pickets and protests during industrial disputes, the state's Supreme Court has rejected mining company Glencore's argument that such activities can't be authorised.
The FWC looks set to reduce by a week its hearings into an application by Coles nightfill worker Penny Vickers to terminate the 2011 agreement, after warning that granting further extensions could render her case moot if the retailer gets a new agreement approved.
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 FWC has accepted that BHP Billiton's sacking of a worker who raised his safety visor to get a better look at an exploding smelter at a uranium mine was justified but harsh, stopping short of reinstatement, though, because of the company's "rational" loss of trust and confidence in him.
Employer's text didn't dismiss employee; Correct ABN speeds application amendment; Bench clears way for challenge to authority on fixed-term contracts.
Catholic school employers have failed to convince the FWC to refer to a full bench its challenge to the right of NSW and ACT teachers to take protected action on the basis their dioceses are not "single interest employers" as required by the Fair Work Act.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has agreed to enter into mediation with an employee who accuses it of taking adverse action by suspending and demoting her and directing her to take indefinite leave following a long absence for cancer treatment and surgery.
The long-serving 65-year-old manager of one of the country's largest non-profit community legal centres has won her job back, with a 20% pay hike, after the FWC found the organisation's management committee deliberately designed a restructuring process to scuttle her candidacy.
The Federal Court will next week hold a preliminary hearing of allegations by a former Australia Post national workers' compensation manager that ex-chief executive Ahmed Fahour caved-in to a union leader's demands to oust him from his role and shelve his efforts to rein-in costs, or face protest rallies and the leaking of sensitive internal documents.
