The MUA has vowed to resist what it claims are "common" efforts by stevedoring companies to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to slash wages and conditions on the waterfront.
In a case of curious timing, the FWC has endorsed a council's mid-pandemic scrapping of an enduring work-from-home arrangement on the basis it fell outside the purview of a flexible work agreement clause.
In a significant decision on agreement-making, an FWC full bench has clarified that the tribunal must reject any undertakings that have a "transformative" effect such that they could have affected workers' votes.
The FWC has upheld the summary dismissal of a truck driver who failed to provide a urine sample after a three-hour wait at a medical clinic, finding he did not make a reasonable effort to fix the problem.
A pandemic-affected employer has succeeded in having redundancy payments to four workers slashed by almost 70%, the FWC finding its perilous cash position and obligation to remaining employees outweighed the impact on the quartet.
In a significant decision considering representative error, a solicitor has failed to convince the FWC that his miscalculations in filing a late unfair dismissal application justified an extension, after the worker waited 15 days to confirm she wanted to proceed.
A Salvation Army recruitment agency worker accused of threatening to break colleagues' fingers if they adjusted the air conditioning has failed to convince the FWC that her stress disorder and a delayed dismissal letter justified an extension of time.
The FWC has approved the union-opposed termination of a clothing company's enterprise deal after observing it was not an "intellectual stretch" for an employee to correctly cast a vote that would have halted it.
Federal Treasury has told the FWC's minimum wage panel to be cautious in accepting predictions of a "very strong snapback" in the unemployment rate, as the economy re-opens after the coronavirus pandemic.
An economist has become embroiled in a second workplace dispute after dismissing a real estate office manager in circumstances found to be neither a genuine redundancy nor justified by alleged misconduct.
