IR Minister Michaelia Cash has defended the appointment of former federal Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella to the FWC, maintaining that experience in employment law or IR is "not necessarily" a requirement.
In the latest instalment in what stands as one of the Fair Work Act's pricklier provisions, a senior FWC member has refused CFMMEU efforts to intercede in his consideration of a non-union agreement.
The FWC has in officially welcoming two new members heard how one negotiated her own pay rates as a 12-year-old and the other was indebted to a member of the bar who always took her enquiring phone calls as a junior lawyer "and never told me the answer".
In a decision exploring legal privilege in anti-bullying cases, a FWC full bench has found an employer disingenuously misrepresented the purpose of an investigation to justify directing its operations manager to participate in a compulsory interview "at pain of dismissal".
Employers operating in high-risk environments such as aged and child care have been given further confidence that they can force workers to immunise after the FWC today upheld the sacking of a long-serving care assistant who refused a compulsory flu shot on allergy grounds.
The United Workers' Union has overcome initial scepticism from the FWC to be permitted to further postpone its inaugural national convention because of COVID-19 uncertainties.
A senior FWC member has scrapped a multinational dredging company's expired deal so it can better compete for "new market opportunities", despite union claims that lower wages will send skilled workers elsewhere and that the current lack of projects is only temporary.
A pick-a-box promoter working two-hour shifts was an employee capable of being dismissed despite being paid on the basis of "periodic" invoices that included her ABN, the FWC has held.
The ABCC's recent good run against the CFMMEU has continued after the FWC confirmed a high-profile union leader seeking a new entry permit would first have to plumb 14 years of internal communications to ascertain what role, if any, he had in trying to temper the organisation's rule-breaking ways.
