FWC

A request to a female senior engineer for WSP to “get the coffees” during a client meeting did not amount to gender-based harassment, the Fair Work Commission has found in rejecting the engineer’s unfair dismissal claim.

A former engineer with Santos has won a bid for more time to bring a claim against the energy giant, with the Fair Work Commission finding “an error in arithmetic” by her lawyer was a reasonable explanation for the out-of-time filing.

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.

Expect more legal battles this year over the right to work from home, with employees continuing to demand flexibility but businesses starting to push back, according to legal experts.

An e-commerce company did not have a valid reason for dismissing an employee who worked from home on a mandatory in-office day and must pay him $26,496 in compensation, the Fair Work Commission has found.

The Fair Work Commission has found that a salary packaging provider had “reasonable business grounds” to force workers back to the office, rejecting an employee’s bid to work full-time from home. 

The Fair Work Commission has found that insurer IAG did not unfairly dismiss a veteran employee after a company review of her at-home cyber activity revealed extensive periods of “no or minimal keyboard activity”.

A former chef of catering company Peter Rowland Group has lost her fight for gender pay equality, with the Fair Work Commission accepting the merits of her claim but ruling the legislation that covers equal pay can apply only to current employees.

The Fair Work Commission has upheld the firing of a Melbourne University professor who was found to have pursued an inappropriate personal relationship with a former employee who later complained she had been “groomed”.

A full bench of the Fair Work Commission has overturned a ruling that a Virgin Australia flight attendant was unfairly sacked, finding she breached the airline’s policies by sleeping on the job and stashing snacks in her crew bag.