Mining unions have failed to convince a senior FWC member that BHP's vaccination mandate breaches the Privacy Act and that it would be reasonable to let workers confirm their inoculation status via the same check-in method they use to enter a pub.
The Federal Court has today thrown out an urgent interlocutory bid to stop Qantas Group dismissing more than 20 employees who failed to meet its mid-November vaccination deadline.
The FWC has ordered stevedoring giant Qube to offer redundancy to a Sydney-based employee unable to work since cruise ships stopped operating in early 2020, accepting that alternative work in Wollongong would be "a huge disruption" to his family life.
The FWC has "reluctantly" applied the brakes to the NSW Government's COVID-19 vaccination mandate for some rail workers after finding it has an obligation to consider two unions' post-implementation challenges to the policy.
The FWC has declined to extend time for an unvaccinated worker who claimed he lodged his claim late because of the theft of 45 one-kilogram silver bars from his home, while it has upheld a nursing home's sacking of a maintenance manager who failed to comply with a State Government inoculation mandate.
The FWC has distinguished between "regular" industrial protests and those likely to attract "public outrage" during pandemic restrictions in finding a crane company entitled to sack an operator who attended a violent anti-vax rally outside CFMMEU offices in Melbourne.
A senior FWC member has invited "relevant authorities" to investigate a potentially fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificate supplied to an employer by a worker claiming to have been unlawfully stood down.
The Federal Court has today refused the TWU's bid for reinstatement of some 2000 ground-handling workers who had their jobs outsourced by the airline at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fair Work Commission President Iain Ross told IR Minister Michaelia Cash that if Deputy President Lyndall Dean repeated her misconduct when she made contentious anti-vaccination comments in a September decision, it would be time to consider removing her from office.
In a sign of the continuing uncertainty surrounding COVID-19's impact on workplaces, the FWC will consider extending millions of award-covered employees' entitlement to two weeks unpaid "pandemic leave" to the end of June next year.
