In a significant win for FWO efforts to extend liability to advisors involved in underpayments, a Full Federal Court has today dismissed an accountancy firm's appeal against penalties imposed last year for failing to ensure a client met its award obligations.
Security giant Wilson is within its rights to avoid paying penalty rates to security guards by allocating their overtime to Sundays, the Federal Court has ruled.
Workers at a now-shuttered immigration detention centre have won retrospective payment of a remote district allowance on accrued annual leave, despite employer arguments that it was tied to time spent at the facility's location.
The big stick handed to the ABCC in the form of personal payment orders against contravening union officials has been whittled further with two Federal Court decisions reinforcing that past records and a clear appreciation of consequences must first be taken into account.
Employers are warning of "massive liability" and instability for all who engage casuals and unions say it could be harder to use labour hire to "drive down costs", after a full Federal Court upheld a finding that a labour hire casual was in fact an employee entitled to annual leave payments.
A restaurant that required a chef to work more than 20 unpaid hours a week and summarily sacked him when he sought to pare it back and take leave was "blissfully unaware" of its award obligations, the FWC has found.
A Federal Court judge has evoked the memory of the BLF's deregistration in the course of handing out maximum fines to the CFMMEU for "deplorable" breaches by a past State branch president, suggesting that any organisation that fails to rein in aberrant behaviour "cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form".
In a significant blow to ABCC attempts to rein in the behaviour of union officials by holding them personally liable for breach fines, the Federal Court has today ruled that an offender's past record must be taken into account before imposing such conditions.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected a push to give employers more scope to refuse requests by casual workers to convert to full-time and part-time work.
