An Aboriginal night patrol officer sacked for timesheet discrepancies has won back his council role after an FWC member took into account "very strong" ties to his remote community and the dearth of alternative employment opportunities.
An academic has welcomed a significant FWC full bench finding that a worker's refusal to participate in fingerprint scanning did not justify his dismissal and warns that many employers lack awareness of their legal obligations and the potential consequences of biometric technology.
A full Federal Court majority has today rejected a judge's reasoning for ordering the MUA to pay a fine of just $38,000 for a week-long unlawful strike at Hutchison Ports' Sydney and Brisbane container terminals, but has rebuffed the FWO's contention that the stevedore should have been awarded $600,000 in damages it didn't seek.
Victoria's Parliament has passed legislation that will enable public sector workers to bargain for a wider range of matters, including minimum staffing levels and job security.
The FWC has held that an agreement negotiated with two train drivers but set to cover an entire transferred workforce on the Roy Hill Pilbara mine network was not genuinely agreed, but it is asking whether this is a minor error that can be dealt with via an undertaking, "odd as that may be".
A tribunal has ruled against UFU Victorian branch and national secretary Peter Marshall in a dispute over defined benefit superannuation that could have added about $1 million to his retirement benefits.
The Federal Court has ordered a construction company to reinstate an electrician until it decides whether it took adverse action by sacking him within 10 days of his becoming a health and safety representative and reporting suspected asbestos in a water tunnel.
Leading employment law academics have urged a WA inquiry to consider a growing body of evidence that wage theft is "not so much an anomaly, as a norm", while the AiG says that characterising under-payments as stealing is misleading.
The Federal Circuit Court has ordered indemnity costs against two casual employees who refused offers to settle their adverse action and award breach cases for $10,000 and maintained their demands for $95,000 payouts.
The FWC has used new legislation permitting it to overlook minor technical or procedural errors in agreements to endorse an enterprise deal with a bargaining notice that failed to comply with the Act's pre-approval requirements.
