Employers must tread very carefully when deciding whether to dismiss permanently injured workers, even when "armed with volumes of supporting medical evidence", lawyers warn.
An injured leading hand who was sacked after performing selected duties for more than a decade has failed in his bid for reinstatement, after the NSW IRC found it would be unreasonable to require his employer to "manufacture a job" to accommodate him.
Exasperated employers must refrain from reprimanding underperforming employees for taking too much sick leave or from sacking them while they're away, lawyers warn.
A Queensland concreting employer has successfully argued that it sacked a team leader - who earned $1.50 an hour more than other employees - for "sound financial reasons", and not because of his back injury.
A workplace armed-robbery victim with post-traumatic stress disorder has told Fair Work Australia she felt harassed and victimised by her employer, who complained of having to "babysit" her.
An unfair dismissal case, involving a worker sacked for theft, has uncovered deficiencies in a South Australian employer's forklift-licence regime that left it unable to prove an OHS breach was serious misconduct.
Fair Work Australia has upheld the summary dismissal of a Bunnings employee who allegedly threatened to shoot a customer services manager and was arrested by police at work.
Fair Work Australia has dismissed an engineer's beard-related unfair dismissal claim after it found it was not unusual or unlawful to require employees to modify their appearance for OHS reasons. Also in this article, a Victorian worker who injured his back eight years ago has been granted leave to seek damages for a mental disorder.