In a significant, if split, decision on the FWC's jurisdictional ambit, a majority full Federal Court has ruled that the tribunal would not be invalidly exercising judicial power if it arbitrated a dispute under an agreement an employer inherited after winning a Defence Department tender.
The FWC has given Santos, and AWU and the AMWU a recommended framework for consulting over pandemic-related proposals such as quarantining, suggesting they discuss current disputes concerning the gas giant's Cooper Basin workforce with a view to putting it into practice.
An FWC full bench has, in dismissing a former Ausgrid worker's appeal, expressed surprise that a presidential member elected to hear the matter in the first place, noting that the employer knew nothing of any dispute before she made the application.
The FWC has ordered an aged care provider to restore leave days to employees it directed to stay away from work over COVID-19 transmission fears, observing "it's just the right thing to do".
The FWC has found "persuasive" the High Court's reliance in Mondelez on ordinary hours to calculate entitlements, dumping a union's attempt to win more annual leave for council waste and recycling workers.
After revoking a finding that a worker was entitled to carer's leave as his mother could not look after his children due to COVID-19 concerns, the FWC has found he met the bar for only one day and can "split the different" on repaying the rest.
In holding that Qantas need not include prior service with related entities or casual employment when calculating flight attendants' redundancy entitlements, a senior FWC member has accused the FAAA of "cherry picking" to try to prove otherwise.
The Federal Court has held that a deal struck outside of an enterprise agreement cannot alter the FWC's jurisdiction to arbitrate, and nor do workers need to re-start dispute processes when a new agreement is approved.
An FWC bench led by President Iain Ross "made no attempt" to analyse how model and agreement redundancy terms would operate in conjunction when assessing whether 21 seafarers had been fairly dismissed, a full Federal Court has found.
An employee's failure to tell her employer about an eight-hour freelance photoshoot on Channel 9's The Block did not justify its decision to issue her a formal warning, the FWC has ruled.