A nurse sacked over her morbid obesity and unfitness to perform duties has won reinstatement and nearly three years' backpay, but a tribunal says she might not sufficiently recover from health setbacks caused by her lengthy suspension and wrongful dismissal.
The FWC has awarded compensation to a sacked childcare worker after noting the "disturbing" failure of a company's HR department to inform the chief executive of protections for employees forced to take time off due to illness or injury.
A tribunal has awarded $3000 for injury to the feelings of a worker who changed careers as a result of her employer's threats when it "callously" dismissed her, then locked her out.
The FWC has ordered compensation for a bottleshop manager held to have asked a customer "would you like a root hehehe receipt", finding his employer had no excuse for its "procedurally disastrous" sacking after accessing an employer organisation's IR advice.
The FWC has questioned the choices that left two sacked childcare workers out of pocket despite being awarded compensation of 21 weeks' pay, observing that a "realistic" approach to the employer's settlement offer would have avoided costs that included having a barrister represent them before the tribunal over three days.
The FWC has redrawn an employer's "line in the sand" over the use of mobile phones while driving forklifts, ordering it to reinstate and compensate a worker after concluding he was harshly sacked for a first safety policy breach.
A full Federal Court has quashed a software company's $5.2 million general protections payout and ordered a retrial after finding that the judge in awarding record compensation to the former Victorian state manager failed to provide adequate reasons in his 350-page decision.
Inghams unfairly sacked an Ethiopian-born worker for failing to weight-check multiple boxes of turkey leg, the FWC has held, noting its failure to provide a translator while "superficially" adhering to correct procedures might explain why it did not know he was following a supervisor's instructions.
A family-run venue management and catering business with thousands of workers and an "unsophisticated" and "impotent" HR function constructively dismissed its manager at a major stadium after issuing her two "entirely unsatisfactory" warnings for conduct that included requesting free tickets to a Geelong v Richmond AFL game.
In an important out-of-hours conduct ruling, the FWC has reinstated a veteran train driver sacked after he told his employer that he faced possible imprisonment for blowing four times over the blood alcohol limit when police breath-tested him on the road.