In a significant decision acknowledging the "scarce" guidance on compulsory workplace COVID-19 vaccinations, the FWC has upheld a big employer's dismissal of a childcare worker for refusing to take a free flu shot.
The FWC has criticised a company's "entirely unjust" process in sacking a long-serving mushroom picker for misplacing a knife, while noting her prior unblemished disciplinary record contrasted strangely with a swathe of warnings following a workplace injury.
The FWC has cautioned against parties assuming they have a common understanding of notions like "usual terms" and "mutual release" in settlement agreements, after an accountant decided to proceed with her unfair dismissal case following apparently successful conciliation.
A detention centre guard who tackled an escaping detainee has failed to win permission to appeal his sacking, a FWC bench rejecting his claim that it was in the public interest because he'd saved the community "from a disastrous 'what may have been'".
The FWC will allow multinational cereal giant Sanitarium to lawyer-up to defend two unfair dismissal claims, noting it is "stressful enough" for an HR manager to be a witness without also representing the company, while its membership of an employer group is irrelevant.
A barrage of "thuggish" texts sent by the partner of a worker alleging harassment and bullying did not justify her dismissal, the FWC has found, describing the employer's attempt to vacuum-seal its investigation of her claims as both unreasonable and unrealistic.
A worker who suffered 11 seizures the day after his sacking has won permission to pursue an unfair dismissal claim lodged five months' late, despite his employer arguing that the "trail is now very cold".
A casual sales assistant who secretly recorded disciplinary meetings leading up to her dismissal has on her fifth turn before the FWC been awarded $4500 compensation.
A mining company must reinstate a summarily sacked coal mine worker and reimburse six months' lost income after its hasty and "inadequate" HR disciplinary process "effectively turned a very strong case with a valid reason to one with little or no procedural fairness".
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a student visa holder who punched a co-worker in the face after accusing him of saying "a lot of bad things" about a colleague she claimed was regularly being sexually assaulted by local Japanese gangsters.
