An FWC full bench has quashed a decision to compensate an "intentionally deviant" mineworker, finding a tribunal member wrongly focussed on a BHP subsidiary's perceived failure to follow its Fair Play disciplinary guidelines.
In what a union has hailed as a victory for a commonsense approach to mobile phone use, a tribunal has reinstated a bus driver sacked for making two calls while parked with the doors open and the vehicle's dual braking system engaged.
A trucking company had a valid reason to sack a driver for speeding in his B-Double, but informing him by phone was "unnecessarily callous", the FWC has found.
A full Federal Court has upheld the dismissal of a senior lawyer who publicly criticised government clients of his firm, finding that repeatedly disobeying reasonable directions to desist trumped his right to express a political opinion.
A higher education peak body says an order for a university to reinstate a lecturer who failed to meet a requirement to have research published in a top journal, but achieved other benchmarks, "wrongly downplays" a need for academic staff to meet reasonable performance objectives.
A senior tribunal member has taken the rare step of steering an unfair dismissal claimant towards the FWC's free legal advice service as a means of counterbalancing any "potential prejudice" arising from his decision to allow an employer to be represented.
An FWC member has lashed BHP for its "astounding" failure to properly apply its 'fair play' policies when it sacked a mineworker for telling two female colleagues a crude joke.
A tribunal member has rounded on an employer for its "reprehensible" response to being found to have unfairly dismissed a worker, describing as "wage theft" its tardy provision of backpay.
An FWC bench led by Justice Iain Ross has shot back at a full Federal Court direction to properly answer a question posed by the president himself, maintaining it had already done so before highlighting the relevant passages.
A full Federal Court has delivered a pointed rebuke to FWC President Iain Ross, finding it could not consider a challenge to the decision of a Commission full bench he led because it was not, "with respect, any decision. . . at all".
