An FWC member has declined to award costs to a prominent community legal centre's general manager despite finding she had been capriciously ousted by the management committee during a restructure and ordering her reinstatement.
An FWC full bench has confirmed that the tribunal can rely on evidence given to royal commissions, this month rejecting former NUW NSW official Nick Belan's challenge to findings that his admissions under oath helped establish his financial misconduct and justified dismissal.
The FWC has ruled on the out-of-hours conduct of a maintenance worker who claimed he was acting in self-defence when he ended up in a fight after a "horsing-around" passer-by took his cowboy hat, leading to his expulsion from the giant Wheatstone LNG project.
In a decision further clarifying naming protocols for complaint and litigation respondents, a court has ruled that a law firm's individual partners need not be identified in a discrimination case brought by a former employee.
Employers opposing the merger of the CFMEU, MUA and TCFU have warned the FWC that the unions would use their combined might to cripple the resource and construction industries, but they argue that in any case more than 45 pending penalty proceedings should legally disqualify them from amalgamating.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a TAFE manager for preparing a false and misleading briefing note in a bid to exculpate himself from responsibility after becoming "caught up" in a training scam, and has rejected his submissions that the employer made him a scapegoat.
A union's liability for entry breaches by its officials has been underlined by a court hitting the CFMEU with a $200,000 fine for disrupting a concrete pour on a major rail project over alleged safety concerns.
A contested payslip and an unsigned employment contract obtained in "unusual" circumstances have persuaded the FWC that an ambassador's driver was unfairly dismissed after he informed the embassy he couldn't work for more than two hours at a time because of a sore back.
As thousands of NSW rail workers prepare to ban overtime from next Thursday amid an extended bargaining dispute, the FWC has thrown out an interlocutory bid to force employers and Treasury to reveal plans for future restructures or staff reductions plus any gains from productivity measures.
The FWC has refused to extend time for an unfair dismissal claim lodged five days late by a pro bono solicitor found to be "primarily responsible" for the delay, ruling that the worker knew the 21-day limit applied and should have followed it up with his representative.
