A Federal government department acted reasonably in dismissing an employee who secretly recorded conversations with colleagues and required daily management from five different executives during an 18-month absence from work, the FWC has ruled.
The FWC has found that a firefighter's dishonesty in concealing a professional ban arising from indecent assaults was sufficient reason for his dismissal, even after rejecting the employer's own reasons as invalid.
In a case likely to test whether an employer can argue one of a position's inherent requirements is not to publicly attack a business partner, a former manager will claim Cricket Australia took adverse action by sacking her for tweeting criticism of the Tasmanian Liberal Party's abortion policies.
The FWC has confirmed the right of employers in safety-critical industries to dismiss workers whose out-of-hours conduct impairs the safe performance of their duties, in the case of a flight attendant who called in sick during a layover after being hospitalised with a blood-alcohol reading of .205.
A leading workplace academic has called on legislators to consider a UK parliamentary inquiry's recommendation to impose a legal obligation to protect workers from sexual harassment, with breaches resulting in "substantial financial penalties".
In a significant decision on out-of-hours conduct, the FWC has ruled that ALDI justifiably dismissed a storeperson for throwing a full beer glass over the heads of colleagues at an official company Christmas party.
Dismissing an employee for providing false and misleading information during the recruitment process was not unfair, despite procedural failings by his employer, a tribunal has ruled.
The FWC has rejected a dismissed employee's contention that a company's duty of care extended to anticipating that he would act in a violent and threatening manner towards a co-worker.
The pitfalls of self-representation have been highlighted by an FWC full bench that found it would be "futile" to hear a former chief executive's anti-bullying case because his notice of appeal "expressly" indicated he was seeking an unnecessary order.
