In a decision that could have employers re-thinking standard travel and hours terms in agreements, the Federal Court has found in favour of a CFMMEU-backed class action that argued workers should be paid for transit time between security gates and their worksite.
In a significant decision on the nature of work, the FWC has ruled that employees required to attend a worksite assembly point by a prescribed time before being transported to a pre-start meeting should be paid for the intervening period.
The FWC has rejected a claim that a chemist operator's HR chief and two managers bullied a pharmacist by failing to roster enough support staff to assist him on Saturday shifts.
The FWC has expressed sympathy for a new father who resisted incentives to buy a second family car to help preserve a work-life balance upended by a transfer to a distant office, but ultimately agreed his employer did not breach his contract's "unreasonable hardship" clause.
Qube Ports must withdraw final warnings issued to seven Port Kembla workers who refused shift extensions, after the FWC took its bargaining team by "complete surprise" and found the employer misconstrued a common abbreviation in its agreement.
A restaurant that required a chef to work more than 20 unpaid hours a week and summarily sacked him when he sought to pare it back and take leave was "blissfully unaware" of its award obligations, the FWC has found.
The AWU's Hair Stylists Australia has deployed its first paid organiser to tackle the "widespread cultural problem" of underpayments as the FWO pursues another hairdressing industry scalp on behalf of a teenage apprentice short-changed $14,500.
In rejecting as "absurd" the expert evidence of a forensic accountant who calculated that Ambulance Victoria owed an on-call media officer $800,000 in unpaid entitlements, the Federal Circuit Court has instead ordered the employer to pay her $155,000, including for time spent sleeping.
The owners of a Coffee Club café franchise have been fined more than $180,000 for taking advantage of a desperate 457 skilled visa worker who they first refused to pay and then forced to hand back $18,000 under threat of ending his sponsorship.
