In the wake of the UK's employment tribunal ruling that "ethical veganism" is a protected philosophical belief in the workplace, a Seyfarth Shaw partner says that there might be scope under state and federal discrimination laws to advance a similar claim in Australia.
A tribunal member "counter-intuitively" refused to award compensation to an unfairly dismissed employee after failing to assess financial loss and wrongly asserting that she had admitted to competing priorities, an FWC full bench has found.
A home improvement company had a valid reason to sack a business manager who recklessly approved credit for a struggling customer, but the FWC has held that its process in dismissing him while on sick leave rendered it unfair.
A casual FIFO worker has been cleared to pursue an unfair dismissal claim despite the employer arguing that half of his seven months with them was taken up with unpaid R&R.
A NSW ministerial speechwriter who lost her post over a "personality clash" cannot challenge the dismissal in the state's industrial tribunal, after it ruled she was a labour hire employee.
A worker dismissed two days before flying overseas only to discover on arrival that her mother was dying of cancer has had her late unfair dismissal application accepted, the FWC finding it would have been "shockingly callous" to require detailed medical records sought by her former employer.
Rotary International's "egregious" dismissal of a Sydney-based manager who initiated an adverse action claim has earned it a $50,000 fine from a judge who singled out the organisation's US-based No.2 for her role in a breach that "struck at the heart" of Australian workplace laws.
An FWC full bench has allowed a casual worker to claim unfair dismissal after finding a senior tribunal member wrongly focussed on her irregular "pattern" of days and hours in holding she had not met the minimum employment period.
In a decision closely examining the FWC's power to award costs, a reinstated worker who was the beneficiary of an earlier ruling has on rehearing failed to persuade the Commission that her employer either unreasonably defended the unfairness of its actions or ignored its poor prospects of success.
Service station owners who required a visa-dependent employee to hand over his tax refund and cover the cost of drive-offs have been ordered to compensate the former console operator and his fellow-worker wife more than $50,000 after a court found them accessorily liable for underpayments.
