A Northern Territory council has overcome union opposition to retain its right to legal representation in a "highly contested" argument over an night patrol officer's reinstatement.
A small employer must pay almost $15,000 to a former part-time worker it sacked for rejecting an "inflexible" full-time job proposal the FWC concluded had been designed to "get rid" of her.
An accounts officer who returned from leave to find her desk had been cleared has been awarded $7690 in compensation for her employer's "callous act" in making her redundant without any warning or consultation.
The FWC has lambasted an employer's outdated views on marriage after it sacked an IT specialist whose husband railed against its managing director via team messaging application Slack, but nonetheless slashed her payout by $56,000 on re-hearing her unfair dismissal application.
A union is challenging the WA Department of Education's belief that teachers automatically repudiate their employment if they receive interim negative working with children notices upon being charged with an offence, before their cases are decided in court.
The FWC has halted the dismissal of an air traffic controller who in the space of two months assigned the wrong runway and "lost" separation of aircraft at Sydney Airport, finding that "questions of fact" around the employer's obligation to manage his performance needed to first be settled.
A Parmalat worker's compensation and injury manager is seeking reinstatement and maximum penalties against her former employer, alleging the dairy giant took adverse action by sacking her for repeatedly complaining to and about its national health and safety manager.
In a reminder to employers to double-check before assuming a worker has abandoned their employment, a business must pay $7000 to an ex-employee after it withdrew his visa sponsorship over an unexplained three-day absence that turned out to be GP-recommended stress leave.
There is "no place for bawdy offensive alpha-male behaviour in the workplace", the FWC has found, in upholding the dismissal of a male worker for asking a female colleague for a kiss and telling another co-worker that he wanted to "f-ck" his sister.
The FWC has sent employers a clear reminder of the conditions and processes required to justify summary dismissal, with its reinstatement of a contractor's employee who admitted to vomiting at a major client's after-hours function but denied propositioning one of its managers.
