Requiring employees to sit in a "slow moving car park queue" and travel up to two hours a day to and from a new work location does not count as reasonable alternative employment, the Fair Work Commission has ruled in a decision to award six workers redundancy pay.
In an unusual postscript to a notorious sham contracting case, an abattoir operator has relied on a Federal Court ruling that it had vigorously opposed to successfully argue that it was the employer of an injured worker, thus avoiding having to pay him more than $150,000 in common law damages.
The Department of Employment has referred to the corporate watchdog allegations that a textile company entered into “contrived arrangements” to avoid paying redundancy entitlements to 60 workers.
Higher superannuation contributions and federal minimum wage rates are - along with new federal senators taking their seats - among the changes due to take effect from Tuesday, July 1.
The Federal Circuit Court has imposed $313,500 in penalties on a company in the Roy Morgan Group for sham contracting, ruling the contraventions were deliberate and directed by senior management.
In what four judges agree is an "extraordinary case" involving a "spectacularly bad witness" and a "serial fraudster", a Swan Hill shop assistant will keep almost half a million dollars in back pay and interest after a full Federal Court confirmed that she had not agreed to work for nothing.
Giving teenage employees free and discounted pizzas and soft drink instead of wages – a practice belonging "in the dark ages rather than twenty first century Australia" – has cost a pizza franchise operator $335,000 in fines.
The Fair Work Commission will allow Patrick Stevedores to proceed with job cuts at the Port of Melbourne, after rejecting an MUA bid for an interim restraining order because the balance of convenience lay with the employer.
Toyota's best chance of overturning last year's ruling that stopped its employees voting on the company's proposed changes to its Altona enterprise agreement appear to rest with its argument that the "no extra claims" clause in the deal is directly inconsistent with the Fair Work Act, after other appeal grounds fell away in argument before the full Federal Court yesterday.
The Fair Work Commission has granted an entry permit to a CFMEU construction and general division organiser, rejecting the FWBC's argument that it was obliged to give weight to the union's poor record of compliance with industrial laws.
