Employment

Former AMA Group CEO Andrew Hopkins has agreed to pay the car repair giant a confidential sum to settle claims he defrauded the company of $3 million and breached his fiduciary duties.

A judge has expressed concern that a “bizarre” last-minute settlement in a long-running case against the CFMEU could damage the public perception of the FWO as a model litigant, saying it could appear that the ombudsman treated some perpetrators as “more equal” than others. 

A subsidiary of hospitality giant Mantle Group has failed to set aside a Fair Work Commission decision finding it systematically underpaid employees and gave “knowingly false” evidence, with an appeals court refusing to find the decision gave rise to the appearance of bias.

Two employment silks and a criminal barrister have been selected by the NSW government to serve on the state’s restored Industrial Court.

A judge has rejected claims by basketball coach Shane Heal that the Sydney Flames used bullying complaints from several players as a ‘smoke screen’ to hide unlawful reasons for suspending him last year.

The Fair Work Commission has ordered a Bendigo Bank worker to come into the office two days a week, saying he was “only concerned about himself” in seeking to work from home full time.

A commercial leader at engineering and construction company Laing O’Rourke was unfairly dismissed over false claims he was offensive and aggressive towards Stayz hosts who complained about a late night work party, a judge has found.

An underpayments class action brought by postgraduate research candidates at the University of Sydney is facing another summary dismissal bid from the federal government, as the university foreshadows a novel argument that the group members are not employees.

The collapsed companies behind dumpling chain Din Tai Fung have been hit with over $3.8 million in penalties after a judge found they engaged in a “a calculated scheme to rob employees of their hard-earned wages and deceive the authorities”.

The allowance for genuine redundancies is “not absolute” and employers need to consider measures to redeploy workers, including retraining, an appeals court has said in an unfair dismissal case involving 22 mining workers.