In the wake of the public spotlight on the Qantas "inclusive language" guidelines, one of its baggage handlers has failed to convince the FWC that tearing a colleague's shirt, shoving him against a locker and telling him to f-ck off back to his country were not sackable offences but rather a bit of "argy bargy" between friends, consistent with the workplace culture.
The Fair Work Commission has sought to better delineate the law around so-called constructive dismissals, in a case in which it lambasted a multinational company's HR department for overseeing a process it likened to "entrapment".
The FWC has observed it is "not necessary" to consider whether representation creates unfairness between parties, as a French company was granted permission to engage a lawyer to defend a self-represented employee's unfair dismissal claim.
The Flight Attendants Association national divisional council has appointed Shane Scanlon as secretary, while the union presses jurisdictional objections against unfair dismissal claims brought by its former leader Andrew Staniforth and member support manager Carolyn Summers.
A presidential member of the FWC has prodded legislators to revisit "confusing" aspects of the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code in order to deliver on its promise of speeding parties' progress through the unfair dismissal jurisdiction.
An FWC full bench majority has refused to accept that an employer's flawed investigation process, coupled with uncharacteristic behaviour purportedly sparked by mixing medication and alcohol, excused a coal miner sacked over profanity-laced threats to co-workers.
An Australia Post employee has failed in a Federal Court bid to win reinstatement after his summary dismissal for acting as a paid industrial advocate for his colleagues.
An FWC full bench has quashed an interlocutory decision allowing an employer to engage lawyers, finding it incumbent on the tribunal to give a self-represented employee an opportunity to weigh in on the matter.
A worker will have another shot at seeking a 45-day extension to file his general protections claim after an FWC full bench found he was wrongly refused on the basis that he needed a credible explanation for the entire length of the delay.
The FWC has ordered a council to reinstate a beach inspector summarily sacked after fixing air-conditioning units that heated instead of cooled its new vehicles, taking it to task over a deeply flawed investigative process that belied the HR and legal expertise available to it.