A tribunal has ruled that Victoria Police's crackdown on officers sporting beards does not breach discrimination laws because it is authorised by the state's Police Regulation Act, despite one leading senior constable claiming that the new policy forced him to sport a 1970s "porn moustache".
The Federal Court has ordered an accountant to pay $476,000 in damages for sexual harassment, rejecting his argument that the relevant laws didn't extend to him as a contractor and that corridors and areas near lifts should not be counted as part of a "workplace".
A driver who last year won $25,000 in an adverse action case against Australia Post has failed to convince the Federal Circuit Court that the corporation breached the general protections laws a second time when it didn't re-employ him during a later recruitment round.
A tribunal has upheld the dismissal of a senior council roadworker for secretly taping conversations with colleagues and making "uncouth" and "nasty" comments about a female co-worker's naked body.
Three Australia Post workers dismissed in 2010 for distributing porn over the corporation's IT system have won reinstatement and compensation, but with their back-pay discounted substantially for misconduct.
A Fair Work Commission full bench majority has urged DP World to address an "anti-dobbing" culture that contributed to its failure to curb a supervisor's bullying behaviour, in a decision upholding the company's dismissal of a subordinate he goaded into assaulting him.
A 64-year-old engineer who claims her employer took unlawful adverse action when it sacked her because of her absence on sick leave and her age has failed in a Federal Court bid to temporarily halt her dismissal.
The Federal Circuit Court has found that a company applied unlawful duress to three service technicians in 2009 when it set a three-day deadline to sign statutory individual contracts and threatened to take them off lucrative shift work if they refused.
A tribunal has found that an employer's failure to formalise an employee's flexible work arrangements to meet her caring responsibilities led to her seeing them as an entitlement rather than a privilege, and any attempts to change them as workplace bullying.
An employee who spiralled into drug abuse and psychiatric illness when her employer and friend sacked her for complaining about sexual harassment has won more than $100,000 in damages.
