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A court has declined to make a declaration agreed to by an employer for admitted breaches of the Fair Work Act, ruling that its repetition of adverse findings would not "have any educative or deterrent effect. . . at all".

A landmark contempt finding and accompanying jail sentence hailed as proof of the FWO's commitment to justice has been overturned by a full Federal Court that found the ruling judge's "open" hostility to the underpaying employer compromised his ability to consider the evidence.

An employee criticised as being ungrateful about securing a restaurant job despite her disability has won $12,500 in compensation for the hurt and humiliation she experienced during her dismissal after 12 weeks.

In a decision vindicating the FWO's resistance to the grouping of multiple contraventions for the purpose of setting penalties, the workplace watchdog has won a fivefold increase in fines imposed on an underpaying company director.

A multinational company has won a rare stay on orders that it pay 173 former detention centre workers more than $130,000 in unpaid allowances, after the Federal Court found the union pushing their case had no record of their whereabouts.

The ABCC is pressing ahead with prosecutions against the CFMMEU, three officials and 44 individual workers over alleged industrial action last year on a Perth airport rail link project.

CFMMEU's Setka to plead guilty to harassment; Employer fined $144,000 for underpayments, fudging records; "Not happy" not enough to justify sacking.

In a penalty decision ordering the local arm of a global conglomerate to pay a further $20,000 to a supervisor unlawfully sacked by an HR manager within her probationary period, a court has cited the company's failure to find out more about the contravening conduct and whether it needed to minimise the risk of it reoccurring.

In what is believed to be an Australian-first, the Victorian CFMMEU is seeking penalties of more than $4 million against four police officers and the civil construction giant McConnell Dowell for allegedly stopping union safety officials from inspecting "high-risk work" at a level-crossing removal project.

A full Federal Court majority has today rejected a judge's reasoning for ordering the MUA to pay a fine of just $38,000 for a week-long unlawful strike at Hutchison Ports' Sydney and Brisbane container terminals, but has rebuffed the FWO's contention that the stevedore should have been awarded $600,000 in damages it didn't seek.