The High Court will consider whether employers' duty of care and consequent exposure to damages extends to providing "safe" disciplinary and dismissal processes that protect sacked workers from psychiatric injury.
The FWC has found understaffing weighed heavily on the mind of a custody officer sacked by Ventia for headbutting a door in frustration at a prisoner on the other side, noting it might be "unfair to apply the standards expected of angels to mere humans".
In a significant decision acknowledged as potentially being viewed as "undemocratic", a FWC full bench majority has found it has the power to make a workplace determination on contested bargaining matters after a deal has already been approved by the Commission.
Direct care workers in aged care will receive total work value pay rises of up to 28.5% after a five-member FWC full bench handed down its final ruling today.
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
The head of the FWC's registered organisations branch has warned Australia's second-biggest union that another decision-maker might not be so accommodating in approving a rule change advanced without conducting a formal vote.
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to wind up a general manager's unfair dismissal case after finding that neither of two settlement offers could be regarded as binding.
A European expatriate who regularly swore at his Australian subordinates in an apparent attempt to spur them to achieve work standards expected in his homeland has lost his adverse action case against his former employer, after a court ruled his behaviour warranted summary dismissal.
A full High Court has refused Catholic school employers leave to appeal a "systemic[ally] importan[t]" finding that employees who resign before a new agreement's retrospective pay rises come into effect are entitled to back pay.