A court has rejected an employee's claim that his former employer breached disability discrimination legislation when it failed to offer redundancy or redeploy him after he sustained an injury at work.
The FWC has determined that Woolworths was justified in sacking a petrol station employee for refusing to hand over money and cigarettes to a "difficult" customer, who then walked off without paying for a Dare iced coffee and spinach ricotta roll.
A full Federal Court has found a CFMEU official called onto a Victorian construction site to assist a health and safety representative is not protected by the state's OHS laws and should have had a federal entry permit.
The FWC has called on employers to introduce a greater range of disciplinary options like fines and unpaid suspensions into agreements to avoid "inappropriately lenient or inappropriately harsh" responses to misconduct that are problematic for all parties concerned.
The FWC has refused to issue orders to suppress the identity of individuals involved in a heated dispute over "illicit" posts on Facebook and other websites.
An FWC full bench has lifted confidentiality orders on a fiery dispute between the UFU and Melbourne's Metropolitan Fire Board over a firefighter's allegedly offensive Facebook comments, finding that parties to the dispute must accept the consequences of open justice regardless of any embarrassment that might ensue.
The FWC has criticised a company for fundamental failures of due process in a dismissal overseen by its HR function and warned that treating workers as human resources runs the risk of ignoring that they are "easily damaged" human beings "and when faulty they should be handled with more care than machines".
As Murdoch University continues to press for termination of its enterprise agreement, its lawyers say an FWC decision upholding the sacking of an employee who used his work email to send abusive messages to the ABS illustrates the deal's outdated provisions.
A tribunal has upheld the sacking of a general manager's personal assistant for storing more than 1200 inappropriate and pornographic emails in a "funny emails" folder, but has compensated her because it was harsh.
An FWC full bench has ordered a re-examination of the sacking of a worker for his "nonchalance" towards OHS obligations, lack of contrition after a workplace mishap and failure to wear safety glasses.
