An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
The FWC has identified 11 award provisions, extending to overtime, reasonable additional hours and on-call, that might interact with new terms to entrench the right to disconnect, ahead of the new laws taking effect in late August.
A casual real estate agent's application has spurred the FWC to vary the industry's award to clarify working hours and associated car allowances, accepting evidence that he had not been paid for the time involved in travelling up to 100 kilometres directly from home to conduct open inspections.
A lawyer has been fined $2400 and her eponymous firm a further $12,000 after a judge highlighted her "unreasoned and unreasonable" belief that the FWO wrongly concluded that it underpaid a legal secretary.
An accountancy firm and its principal must pay penalties totalling almost $70,000 for failing to comply with FWO notices to produce documents linked to to its client's "grossly inadequate" employee record-keeping.
The Federal Court has flayed the Republic of Italy for failing to heed Australian IR laws in its local consulates and has ordered it to pay a $94,000 fine, $7500 compensation and indemnity costs to an administrative employee after it failed to pay him annual leave loading for six years, to keep records in English and to produce the records on demand.
A senior FWC member has delved into arbitral history to offer his own definition of a 'seven day shiftworker' after expressing frustration that there is no "simple" or "unambiguous" description of the term in the many awards it is employed.
A judge has held that an "instant" online script did not excuse an underpaying employer from having to attend a penalty hearing, while also warning that in future the court is unlikely to accept certificates from providers using the model adopted by the Wesfarmers-owned service.
A court has issued rare orders compelling a former economics professor to face FWO questions under oath about his capacity to pay penalties and compensation arising from underpayment judgments handed down in 2019 and 2020.
A director's argument that he is well qualified to represent his company in an underpayments case has fallen flat, a court citing a "lack of objectivity" as being among the reasons to reject the proposition.
