A Rio Tinto employee has been reinstated after the FWC highlighted starkly different recommendations in investigations conducted by its HR and safety experts.
The FWC has upheld a building company's sacking of a safety officer who insisted his job was limited to an advisory capacity despite repeated warnings that he was to rigorously enforce safety across sites.
The FWC has reinstated a public bus driver dismissed after a road rage incident in which a vehicle was damaged and punches thrown, the commissioner observing that while the employee-employer relationship was "bruised", it was not beyond repair.
The FWC has found a Coles Supermarkets baker who texted explicit images to a manager who responded "great d--k pic" did not sexually harass him as he appeared to initially take them as "a joke", but the tribunal has upheld his dismissal as his behaviour breached the retailer's code of conduct.
In an indication of the harder line the FWC is taking on allowing lawyers to appear, it has rejected a bid for representation by a large well-resourced employer with thousands of employees that claimed its in-house IR and HR personnel lacked sufficient advocacy experience to defend an unfair dismissal case.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a senior ETU delegate who objected to his employer's introduction of GPS tracking, finding he deliberately wrapped his device in a Twisties bag to conceal his whereabouts and falsified service records when absent from work.
A union delegate has been reinstated after the FWC determined that the absence of managerial opposition to a brief on-site "undies" protest meant it failed the legislative definition of unlawful industrial action.
The FWC has reinstated a CFMEU lodge president dismissed for a series of threatening phone calls to workmates after questioning why recommendations and mitigating factors raised during a senior HR advisor's investigations were absent from the employer's final report.
An "acquiescent" labour hire company should have sought more information from a host employer about its reasons for ending the placement of an on-hire worker, the FWC has ruled in finding her dismissal unfair.
An FWC member denied a sacked worker an opportunity to re-open his case when she failed to forward to him a crucial psychologist's report her chambers received hours after the hearing concluded, a full bench has found.
