The 12-day gap between a concreter's two-day "trial" and starting full-time work did not count as "continuous" employment, leaving him just shy of the statutory minimum necessary to challenge his dismissal, the FWC has found.
The FWC has ordered a company to compensate a long-serving 72-year-old worker sacked via a text declaring it had made his position "an honorary role", after hearing its general manager felt he had a cultural duty to show respect for his elders and sought to soften the blow.
An employer unfairly sacked a labourer for running over a pet galah, the FWC has held, rejecting claims that he breached a formal directive not to operate vehicles when Crackers was on the ground.
The FWC has allowed a worker to proceed with her unfair dismissal case after it found that counting the employer's director and company secretary lifted numbers above the 15-employee threshold that excludes small businesses.
The AAT has overruled the Attorney-General's Department's refusal to make a FEG redundancy payment to a worker who claims she stayed on at the administrator's request to help with winding-down a failed company, but then had her retrenchment payout denied when employee numbers fell from 60 to below the eligibility threshold of 15.
After confirming a company's deregistration is no barrier to determining an unfair dismissal claim, the FWC has found the sacking complied with the small business dismissal code but has referred "questionable practices" to the ATO and Home Affairs.
The FWC has ordered an accounting firm to compensate a bookkeeper sacked in a "hopelessly cavalier" fashion via email while pregnant and holidaying overseas, rejecting the employer's claim it was a genuine redundancy.
A gym must compensate a martial arts instructor for taking the "unnecessarily harsh" step of summarily sacking him, despite the FWC finding it within its rights to give him his marching orders for constantly using his phone while supervising classes.
An FWC full bench has thrown out a $40,000 compensation order made against an employer found to have unfairly dismissed a worker, ruling that a senior member erred in failing to categorise it as a small business.
