The FWC has found it highly likely that a worker's Scottish accent contributed to her "this is sh*t" comment being misheard by her supervisor as "I quit", meaning the employer lacked a valid reason for her subsequent dismissal.
A full Federal Court has clarified the extent to which employers must investigate alternative roles for workers caught up in restructures, finding that a mining company had an obligation to assess whether employees could replace already-engaged contractors before making them redundant.
In a decision sure to catch the eye of service providers using rostering apps to keep workers at arm's length, the FWC has found that a home care worker who signed two documents describing her as an independent contractor is in fact an employee capable of suing her employer for unlawful dismissal.
A Newcastle-based church unfairly summarily dismissed a worker when it took the view that no-one vaccinated against COVID-19 could work for it because it viewed the inoculation as "the world's largest ever untested medical experiment", and retrospectively applied the policy to the worker without warning.
A small not-for-profit organisation with no shortage of valid reasons for dismissing a finance manager who "disappeared" during an audit period has nevertheless been ordered to pay her more than $12,000 compensation after the FWC found its executive director should not have acted as "judge, jury and executioner" by overseeing the entire disciplinary process.
An accused murderer has won extra time to pursue an unfair dismissal case against the ATO, claiming it constructively dismissed him when his wife used her power of attorney to tender his resignation while he was incarcerated and suspended from work.
Media host and writer Antoinette Lattouf has failed to have the ABC's jurisdictional objections to her unlawful dismissal case referred directly to a FWC full bench, despite arguing that she will appeal an unfavourable finding and that she "anticipates" that the broadcaster will do the same.
Lawyers for media host and writer Antoinette Lattouf have taken her high-profile departure from the ABC to the Federal Court, alleging she was unlawfully sacked in breach of the ABC's enterprise agreement.
A judge has found the Bureau of Meteorology's chief executive unlawfully "managed" a senior employee on more than $200,000 out of her job, while observing in passing that the APS's use of individual flexibility agreements to bump up pay packets is "a game of smoke and mirrors" that limits public servants' redeployment options.
