Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has told the High Court that upholding Qantas' challenge to a finding that it unlawfully outsourced ground-handling jobs would lead to a "chronic imbalance" in IR, while the airline argues that the Government should not be allowed to intervene in the case in the first place.
Australian workplace laws have a "legislative preference" for registered unions to act as a "specific vehicle" for workers seeking to enforce their rights under industrial instruments, the Federal Court has heard.
In returning a worker to her job and restoring most of her lost pay, finding the policy the worker breached "might make sense to copyright lawyers and some IT specialists, but probably no one else" the FWC has cautioned that "employer policy documents and manuals must be accessible, understandable and reasonable in their terms".
The FWC has given the go-ahead to a scientist's adverse action case despite claims she "played" the employer by obtaining a reference stating she resigned for health reasons, before refusing to sign a release deed and initiating legal action.
Stevedoring giant Qube has failed to head off a multi-million lawsuit after the FWC found it had no standing to seek retrospective agreement variations affecting dockworkers' pay.
An employer alleging a "rogue" HR contractor's misconduct robbed it of a chance to defend a supervisor's unfair dismissal claim has failed to convince the FWC to revoke a decision that left it with a $34,000 compensation bill.
In considering the case of a worker sacked for failing to tell his employer about his licence suspension and then lying about it, a NSW IRC member has found that his length of service "'cuts both ways' – the longer an employee’s period of service, the more they can be expected to be aware of the conduct expected of them by their employer".
A Jetstar maintenance supervisor who referred to colleagues as "dumb c-nts" and tried to destroy the credibility of a complaining subordinate by revealing he was overtly flatulent and openly rubbed his p-nis at work has failed to establish that his sacking involved double standards or unfairness.
TPG Telecom says it used a legal documents designer and best-practice inclusivity guidelines to create an engaging, accessible post-merger deal with "amazing" conditions, but the CEPU's communications division says it delivers a pay cut and unfairly shifts the goalposts on penalty rates.
The FWC has ordered the reinstatement of a construction worker sacked on the basis of a clutch of "confected" claims that included alleged commuting challenges after losing his driver's licence and his purported concealment of firearms and pornography charges.
