The FWC has reinstated a Queensland rail worker sacked for breaching the organisation's zero alcohol policy when he blew 0.025 in a random workplace alcohol breath test, finding the dismissal harsh because of his unblemished 39-year tenure, his age and limited education.
The FWC has declared after eight unfair dismissal applications and 24 matters in total over two years that it will no longer entertain a persistent worker's quest for satisfaction through the tribunal.
A big employer's failure to give union representatives a "heads up" that it would impose a vaccination mandate did not necessarily render its subsequent dismissal of 25 workers unfair, the FWC has found.
The FWC has compensated a worker sacked for making "racist" comments, finding her employer's handling of her dismissal "appalling" and that it had been "very unfair to label her a racist person".
In what it claims is its first litigation seeking to have a holding company found responsible for its subsidiaries' breaches, the FWO has initiated court action against ASX-listed Super Retail Group for self-reported underpayments of more than $1 million that led to an internal audit and backpayments exceeding $50 million that the watchdog says remain short of the mark.
The FWC has reinstated a mineworker sacked by a Yancoal subsidiary for aggressive and threatening behaviour in which he threatened to cut a co-worker's throat, finding the dismissal harsh because of his unblemished 12-year tenure, his remorse and his PTSD.
In finding a worker with an oral contract an independent contractor, the FWC has affirmed that the principles of Personnel Contracting apply whether the contract is written, oral or some combination and has suggested that the previously-used "multifactorial approach" didn't necessarily cause "chaos", but created "legal and commercial uncertainty".
Woolworths has told the Senate work and care inquiry that 37.4% of its casuals accepted offers to convert from casual to permanent, which chair Barbara Pocock says is much higher than the committee has otherwise heard.
BHP Minerals has failed to establish that almost $20,000 in education assistance it paid to a mining engineer pushed him above the high income threshold for unfair dismissal protection, after it chose not to exercise its right to recoup the payments.
The FWC will permit a security company to use telephone recordings of worker's allegedly "extremely offensive" conversations with colleagues in defending his unfair dismissal claim, finding it in line with telecommunications interception laws and surveillance clauses in his contract.
