Case law page 18 of 144

A Serco prison dog handler's refusal to cooperate with a HR manager he accused of conducting a fishing expedition, covertly recording their interview and claiming in front of an inmate that he had evidence to "crumble the empire" warranted his summary dismissal, the FWC has held.

Employsure has rejected a sales worker's claims that it subjected him to discrimination, bullying and coercion after he applied for parental leave and challenged a claimed unilateral downgrading of employees' conditions, and says it does not know how a record he kept of his treatment came to be destroyed.

The FWC has rejected an unvaccinated child protection officer's faith-based challenge to her sacking, despite claims that requiring her to get a COVID-19 jab is akin to asking a Muslim worker "to have injections that s/he considered not Halal".

The FWC has for the second time in four months found that deleting a worker from WhatsApp groups dedicated to rostering constitutes a dismissal.

A FWC member has expressed amazement that an employer "pinned" alleged timesheet fraud on an employee when in fact his former manager performed the work.

The FWC has lambasted a senior government employee for their "reprehensible" attempts to prompt a witness by sending texts during a remote hearing of an unvaccinated worker's unfair dismissal case.

The FWC has upheld the sacking of a disability services manager for including false information on a form, leading to her employer improperly claiming fees and endangering its federal funding.

The FWC has found that a HR manager who quit after her employer changed her responsibilities was not forced to resign, noting that although she had to report to a different manager, "a change in a reporting line does not constitute constructive dismissal".

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has told the High Court that upholding Qantas' challenge to a finding that it unlawfully outsourced ground-handling jobs would lead to a "chronic imbalance" in IR, while the airline argues that the Government should not be allowed to intervene in the case in the first place.

In returning a worker to her job and restoring most of her lost pay, finding the policy the worker breached "might make sense to copyright lawyers and some IT specialists, but probably no one else" the FWC has cautioned that "employer policy documents and manuals must be accessible, understandable and reasonable in their terms".