The SDA has strongly defended its tying of bargained pay rises to the FWC's annual safety net rises, pointing to inflation-beating increases over the past seven years enjoyed by 100,000 Coles workers, as voting opens today on the retailer's proposed four-year deal in the face of a RAFFWU campaign to reject it.
The High Court will consider whether employers' duty of care and consequent exposure to damages extends to providing "safe" disciplinary and dismissal processes that protect sacked workers from psychiatric injury.
The FWC has found understaffing weighed heavily on the mind of a custody officer sacked by Ventia for headbutting a door in frustration at a prisoner on the other side, noting it might be "unfair to apply the standards expected of angels to mere humans".
In a significant decision acknowledged as potentially being viewed as "undemocratic", a FWC full bench majority has found it has the power to make a workplace determination on contested bargaining matters after a deal has already been approved by the Commission.
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 rejected an employer's bid to wind up a general manager's unfair dismissal case after finding that neither of two settlement offers could be regarded as binding.
The MEU has today lodged the first "same job, same pay" application, for labour hire workers at a Queensland coal mine, promising it will be the first of many.
A European expatriate who regularly swore at his Australian subordinates in an apparent attempt to spur them to achieve work standards expected in his homeland has lost his adverse action case against his former employer, after a court ruled his behaviour warranted summary dismissal.
A full High Court has refused Catholic school employers leave to appeal a "systemic[ally] importan[t]" finding that employees who resign before a new agreement's retrospective pay rises come into effect are entitled to back pay.