A Northern Territory council has overcome union opposition to retain its right to legal representation in a "highly contested" argument over an night patrol officer's reinstatement.
A small employer must pay almost $15,000 to a former part-time worker it sacked for rejecting an "inflexible" full-time job proposal the FWC concluded had been designed to "get rid" of her.
An accounts officer who returned from leave to find her desk had been cleared has been awarded $7690 in compensation for her employer's "callous act" in making her redundant without any warning or consultation.
The FWC has lambasted an employer's outdated views on marriage after it sacked an IT specialist whose husband railed against its managing director via team messaging application Slack, but nonetheless slashed her payout by $56,000 on re-hearing her unfair dismissal application.
In a reminder to employers to double-check before assuming a worker has abandoned their employment, a business must pay $7000 to an ex-employee after it withdrew his visa sponsorship over an unexplained three-day absence that turned out to be GP-recommended stress leave.
The FWC has sent employers a clear reminder of the conditions and processes required to justify summary dismissal, with its reinstatement of a contractor's employee who admitted to vomiting at a major client's after-hours function but denied propositioning one of its managers.
The FWC has castigated an HR department for casting aside its "proper role" when it pursued incorrect allegations and facilitated the unfair dismissal by ambush of a manager it considered an "ongoing management problem".
In a rare case, two former operators of a Canberra massage parlour potentially face up to a year in jail for allegedly providing false or misleading evidence to the FWC.
A company has been forced to reinstate a long-serving senior executive it sacked more than three years ago following his stoush with an HR manager, while also facing a bill of more than $1 million in back pay, long service leave, penalties and compensation.
A Sydney-based Canadian paid a regular monthly untaxed figure in US dollars by a Calgary-headquartered company for which he agreed to act as an independent contractor has had his unfair dismissal claim upheld, with the FWC finding he was not genuinely retrenched.