The FWC has upheld an "inept" dismissal bereft of procedural fairness, finding it unlikely to have altered the result for a worker who swore, abused and tried to pick a fight with colleagues while on a warning.
In a case likely to be closely watched by employers considering mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, the FWC will probe whether Ozcare unfairly sacked a long serving care assistant who refused a compulsory flu shot on allergy grounds, while the Commission has also weighed-in on the contentious issue of compulsory jabs for Santas.
The FWC has praised the CSIRO's approach to the dismissal of a scientist accused of threatening students he supervised, describing him as a "peddler of false allegations" who sought to characterise almost every interaction with a superior as bullying.
The FWC has found employers are not obliged to keep workers on the payroll because of JobKeeper's availability, but has awarded a manager compensation for unfair dismissal that included 24 weeks of the job subsidy, because retaining him would have been "entirely consistent" with the scheme's objectives.
The FWC has awarded $8000 compensation to an airport employee who transferred sensitive files from his work computer onto a personal USB, finding the employer took a "kitchen sink" approach to allegations used to justify his summary dismissal.
In what stands as a lesson in managing employees with deeply-held grievances, a senior tribunal member has commended a large employer's HR department for its patience in trying to accommodate a "very difficult" worker before his dismissal.
A managing director's attempt to "point-score" during hearings into the dismissal of an employee who feared a gun-owning co-worker has been decried by an FWC commissioner as among the "poorest displays" from a respondent she has encountered in five years on the Commission.
In a warning about the myriad ways disciplinary investigations can go wrong, the FWC has rejected virtually every finding a large government agency relied on to sack an experienced rail employee who described his dismissal meeting as a "Pearl Harbour" moment.
An FWC senior member who considered a bus driver's submissions on procedural fairness to be "unduly pernickety" wrongly found he was properly notified and had a chance to respond, but a full bench has upheld his sacking.
The FWC has declined to hear an NRL assistant coach's late claim that his club unfairly dismissed him during the season's temporary suspension due to COVID-19, but has conceded that he might reasonably feel "particularly aggrieved" about his selection for redundancy.
