An employer has been ordered to compensate a worker for sacking him for making an anonymous complaint to a safety regulator, resulting in the business receiving a number of improvement notices.
The Federal Court has refused to restrain an employer from sacking an elected health and safety representative until his adverse action claim is resolved, after finding an injunction could undermine the employer's right to enforce its safety protocols.
In an undecided case highlighting the risk of conflict between company functions, a workers' comp manager has claimed her employer took adverse action against her for making complaints about its national health and safety manager.
A union official recently accused of hindering a WHS inspector in Queensland has been charged with doing the same thing in another jurisdiction, while two of his colleagues have been charged with misleadingly telling workers they were entitled, by WHS laws, to leave an "unsafe" site on full pay.
An OHS coordinator has been ordered to pay his former employer $35,000 in legal costs, after a court found he was dismissed for divulging confidential workers' comp data and not, as he claimed, for exercising his workplace right to complain of bullying.
An employer has been ordered to pay a psychologically ill worker $160,000, after a court found its decision to dismiss him over "concerns about [his] capacity to return to work" was the same as dismissing him because of his mental disability.
A court has rejected a worker's claim that his employer took adverse action against him by sacking him after he took sick leave, after the employer was able to demonstrate his illness "played no part" in the dismissal.
An occupational health and safety officer was sacked for pressuring colleagues to support her harassment complaint, and not for making the complaint, a court has found in rejecting her adverse action claim.
