The FWC has found an Aboriginal corporation took unlawful adverse action by sacking three cultural heritage field officers for failing to prove ancestral connections, noting it was a by-product of the misery inflicted on victims of the stolen generation.
The Federal Court today granted an AWU application to delay by a month the trial of its bid to quash the investigation that led to Federal Police raids on the union's offices last year.
A large employer's failure to tell an employee what claims were being investigated before conducting a recorded interview was among a number of flaws identified by the FWC in a procedurally "infected" dismissal.
In a significant ruling that might reduce penalties regulators can win for Fair Work Act breaches, the Federal Court has found that the legislation's double jeopardy provision prevents the imposition of separate fines for related contraventions arising from the same conduct.
In refusing an extension of time application, the FWC has found incorrect advice that a "no-win/no-fee" law firm allegedly gave a worker about the cut-off date for lodging her unfair dismissal application would not constitute representational error as it declined her business.
The FWC has granted an entry permit to a former CFMEU official once fined $30,000 for blockading a worksite and abusing workers in a bid to coerce Grocon into making an agreement, hearing he became a "different person" once employed as an AWU organiser.
Economist and former Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission presidential member Joe Isaac has called for a major overhaul of IR laws to restore the power of unions and boost the "authority" of the IR tribunal to drive wages growth.
An employer has been set the challenge of reverse engineering an agreement rejected on the basis it was not genuinely agreed, after the FWC observed that while achievable through undertakings it was nonetheless a "difficult task".
The Reserve Bank has pointed to the concentration of cutting-edge software and information technology in a small number of businesses and narrow labour market segments as a factor behind flat wages growth.
A prison officer effectively sacked twice after pleading guilty to assaulting three inmates has again won his job back, an appeal court finding that the IR commissioner who originally reinstated him had correctly focused on what is fair and just, rather than "the reputation of the government".
