More than a year after the High Court ruled Qantas took unlawful adverse action against 1,700 of its former employees, the Federal Court has awarded one of them $100k in compensation for non-economic loss alone.
"Simple life experience" should have taught an employee not to bully and humiliate his co-worker, according to the Fair Work Commission, but a lack of evidence that he was trained in workplace policies meant his dismissal was harsh.
It was "highly inappropriate" for a worker's paid agent to pursue a general protections claim that had no prospects of success, but the Fair Work Commission says the employer's $80k legal bill appears "excessive".
It might have been unreasonable to make further demands of an employee who had already complied with his employer's absence notification system, but this didn't amount to bullying, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.
An employee who was only available to work on a day her employer closed its business was 'dismissed', the Fair Work Commission has ruled, allowing her general protections claim to proceed.
An employer was understandably offended by the suggestion it took adverse action against an employee because she disclosed she had autism, the Fair Work Commission has accepted in dismissing her claim.
A manager was not forced to resign, but rather engaged in a clear strategy of undermining his own return to work because "he wanted to be dismissed", the Fair Work Commission has ruled in rejecting his general protections claim.
An employee was not eligible to apply for stop-bullying orders regarding behaviour that occurred while she was absent and receiving workers' compensation payments, the Fair Work Commission has ruled, in a case that a lawyer says takes a surprisingly narrow view of when someone is considered "at work".
After sending an employee a text message about her "final payment", an employer couldn't argue it never meant to dismiss her, the Fair Work Commission has found.
