A hotel management company that took unlawful adverse action when it stopped giving shifts to a casual bartender who complained of being underpaid has been ordered to pay $11,000 compensation, including a sum for distress, hurt, and humiliation.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected a second attempt by electricity distributor Essential Energy to move some managers and senior technical employees from an enterprise agreement to individual contracts, ruling that the "common understanding" of the agreement's coverage clause overrides its literal meaning.
The High Court will decide next Thursday whether BHP Coal took adverse action against a mineworker when it sacked him for holding up an anti-"scab" sign at a picket in Queensland's Bowen Basin in 2012.
Despite acknowledging the convention that it is a "brave or foolish" FWC member who refuses to follow a full bench ruling, a commissioner has done just that on the way to granting a union's application for a scope order for an agreement to cover workers at one of a building company's four sites.
The Fair Work Commission has held that a Victorian water authority made a "further claim" that contravened its enterprise agreement when it removed a policy providing for employees' personal use of its cars.
An unfairly dismissed Catholic school teacher who successfully argued before a Fair Work Commission full bench that a tribunal member failed to give sufficient consideration to reinstatement options has again missed out on getting her job back.
A building company and its director who dismissed a construction worker so that they could re-employ her as an independent contractor now face civil penalties and a possible compensation order.
A corrections officer who failed to properly engage with her employer's attempts to assess her fitness to return to work was not unfairly dismissed, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.
The Federal Court has fined the CFMEU's construction and general division and five of its officials more than $150,000 for contravening right of entry laws, prompting FWBC director Nigel Hadgkiss to state that entry permits are a "privilege", and not a licence to act unlawfully.
