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A HR professor who describes himself as "against woke nonsense" has failed to persuade a FWC member that he should recuse himself from hearing his general protections application because his chambers' email signature features the LGBTIQ+ flag.

The FWC has found it highly likely that a worker's Scottish accent contributed to her "this is sh*t" comment being misheard by her supervisor as "I quit", meaning the employer lacked a valid reason for her subsequent dismissal.

The FWC has reduced the redundancy entitlements of five former employees of online trading platform Bartercard after they refused new positions requiring them to work exclusively from home and to fork out the full cost of setting up an appropriate space.

The FWC has "condemned" an employer for characterising its bid to redeploy a worker to a "substantially different role" as fulfilling its redundancy obligations and has refused to reduce his severance payment.

Most universities now have cultural workload allowances for First Nations employees in their agreements that recognise the often unseen cultural education guidance they provide, with WA's Murdoch University the latest to adopt the entitlement, according to the NTEU.

In a decision warning that workplaces are "on notice" to meet far higher standards of behaviour, the FWC has thrown out the unfair dismissal claim of a veteran Alcoa worker held to have groped a female colleague.

In what stands as a forensic analysis of disciplinary process failings, a judge in a near-300-page judgment has found that a construction giant took adverse action against a senior manager when it sacked him for allegedly intimidating property owners while partying during the 2020 bushfire recovery effort.

A paid agent claiming to have never been told of any complaints about its services has welcomed FWC suggestions to regulate the industry while insisting the Commission should "surgically" root out "bad actors" rather than take a shotgun approach that could raise costs for workers contesting dismissals.

A full Federal Court has clarified the extent to which employers must investigate alternative roles for workers caught up in restructures, finding that a mining company had an obligation to assess whether employees could replace already-engaged contractors before making them redundant.

The Law Council has endorsed the FWC's quest for stricter regulation of paid agents, but warned it off considering the "capacity" of lawyers to act for parties in cases before the Commission.