"Fair go" endures despite pandemic IR changes, says FWC; Guard reinstated, but demoted; and FWC backs sacking of worker offended by supervisor's tongue-lashing.
The FWC has slammed a "presumptuous" employer for taking up its time with a baseless late bid to have the tribunal throw out the unfair dismissal claim of a casual boxing trainer seeking compensation at the JobKeeper rate.
The AAT has overruled the Attorney-General's Department's refusal to make a FEG redundancy payment to a worker who claims she stayed on at the administrator's request to help with winding-down a failed company, but then had her retrenchment payout denied when employee numbers fell from 60 to below the eligibility threshold of 15.
After confirming a company's deregistration is no barrier to determining an unfair dismissal claim, the FWC has found the sacking complied with the small business dismissal code but has referred "questionable practices" to the ATO and Home Affairs.
The FWC has ordered an accounting firm to compensate a bookkeeper sacked in a "hopelessly cavalier" fashion via email while pregnant and holidaying overseas, rejecting the employer's claim it was a genuine redundancy.
A gym must compensate a martial arts instructor for taking the "unnecessarily harsh" step of summarily sacking him, despite the FWC finding it within its rights to give him his marching orders for constantly using his phone while supervising classes.
The FWC has rejected the "post fabricated" inventions of a supermarket owner found to have sacked a casual shop assistant because he preferred workers from Asian-speaking backgrounds, ordering full compensation despite claims it would destroy his business.
The FWC has upheld a cattle station's sacking of a director for serious misconduct, finding he paid himself unauthorised leave and failed to inform the elderly business owners of escalating legal fees of more than $1 million.
A TAFE must reinstate a teacher it sacked after he named a prominent local farmer in a lecture about the effects of chemical sprays, the FWC finding that relating a "factual" 20-year-old anecdote did not amount to misconduct.
A long-serving industrial tribunal member has taken aim at an employer's claim that summarily sacking a worker by text was a "generational thing", describing the method as "unconscionably undignified" while insisting that dismissals should always be conducted face-to-face.
