A Newcastle-based church unfairly summarily dismissed a worker when it took the view that no-one vaccinated against COVID-19 could work for it because it viewed the inoculation as "the world's largest ever untested medical experiment", and retrospectively applied the policy to the worker without warning.
The FWC bench appointed to scrutinise a paid agent's future involvement in adverse action and unfair dismissal cases has asked a first tranche of 46 applicants to explain why they need to be represented by a firm recently described as having engaged in "unethical" practices.
The High Court will consider whether employers' duty of care and consequent exposure to damages extends to providing "safe" disciplinary and dismissal processes that protect sacked workers from psychiatric injury.
The FWC has found understaffing weighed heavily on the mind of a custody officer sacked by Ventia for headbutting a door in frustration at a prisoner on the other side, noting it might be "unfair to apply the standards expected of angels to mere humans".
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to wind up a general manager's unfair dismissal case after finding that neither of two settlement offers could be regarded as binding.
A European expatriate who regularly swore at his Australian subordinates in an apparent attempt to spur them to achieve work standards expected in his homeland has lost his adverse action case against his former employer, after a court ruled his behaviour warranted summary dismissal.
A small not-for-profit organisation with no shortage of valid reasons for dismissing a finance manager who "disappeared" during an audit period has nevertheless been ordered to pay her more than $12,000 compensation after the FWC found its executive director should not have acted as "judge, jury and executioner" by overseeing the entire disciplinary process.
An accused murderer has won extra time to pursue an unfair dismissal case against the ATO, claiming it constructively dismissed him when his wife used her power of attorney to tender his resignation while he was incarcerated and suspended from work.
The FWC has awarded compensation to an accounts assistant who said she could not return to the office after working from home for almost a decade, while her employer maintained that the arrangement only began with the pandemic.