The Federal Court has resuscitated a worker's long-running adverse action claim, accepting that a 2014 settlement agreement with her employer might have been based on incorrect advice she was given by an FWC member.
An Aboriginal night patrol officer sacked for timesheet discrepancies has won back his council role after an FWC member took into account "very strong" ties to his remote community and the dearth of alternative employment opportunities.
A full Federal Court majority has today rejected a judge's reasoning for ordering the MUA to pay a fine of just $38,000 for a week-long unlawful strike at Hutchison Ports' Sydney and Brisbane container terminals, but has rebuffed the FWO's contention that the stevedore should have been awarded $600,000 in damages it didn't seek.
Faced with a "byzantine" and bewilderingly complex bid to recoup millions of dollars in damages, the Federal Court has found the CFMMEU organised unlawful bans at the Port Botany container terminal in 2017 but suggested further mediation on relief to take a load off public resources.
The FWC has brokered a three-month truce between DP World Australia and the CFMMEU's MUA division under which the parties will resume bargaining and adopt a "neutral media stance".
A small employer must pay almost $15,000 to a former part-time worker it sacked for rejecting an "inflexible" full-time job proposal the FWC concluded had been designed to "get rid" of her.
An accounts officer who returned from leave to find her desk had been cleared has been awarded $7690 in compensation for her employer's "callous act" in making her redundant without any warning or consultation.
The FWC has lambasted an employer's outdated views on marriage after it sacked an IT specialist whose husband railed against its managing director via team messaging application Slack, but nonetheless slashed her payout by $56,000 on re-hearing her unfair dismissal application.
In a reminder to employers to double-check before assuming a worker has abandoned their employment, a business must pay $7000 to an ex-employee after it withdrew his visa sponsorship over an unexplained three-day absence that turned out to be GP-recommended stress leave.
In a rare case, two former operators of a Canberra massage parlour potentially face up to a year in jail for allegedly providing false or misleading evidence to the FWC.
