The Fair Work Commission will next week hear the Andrews Government's bid to suspend a two-month lockout of about 200 workers by Carter Holt Harvey Wood Products in central Victoria.
Just a week after RBA Governor Philip Lowe called for workers to push for bigger wage rises, the FWC has approved a deal that secures increases of just 2% a year for his own 1000-strong workforce, but with the prospect, for some, of also winning performance-based bonuses.
The ASU and TWU have won access to sensitive internal documents held by aviation ground handlers Aerocare, despite the company arguing that a large number of the unions' members worked for competitors who would benefit from any insight into the algorithms behind its rostering system.
A casual pizza delivery worker who lost a "driver of the year" competition has failed in her bid to overturn the result and pocket $15,000 prize money after the FWC found it would be a "bizarre and entirely inappropriate outcome" and that in any case it had no power to hear the case.
Loy Yang power station and mine workers have conceded the possibility of forced redundancies and increased use of contractors in exchange for annual 5% pay rises in voting up a new enterprise agreement with operators AGL Energy.
AFL players will get an immediate 20% pay rise under a new $1.84 billion collective bargaining agreement that ties income to industry revenue for the first time.
Senator Nick Xenophon has won support for a Senate inquiry that will investigate enterprise agreements by big corporations that trade off penalty rates.
Maverick Federal Nationals MP George Christensen has this morning made good on his vow to introduce a private members' bill to stop Sunday penalty rates from being cut in 11 days' time.
The AWU has welcomed the selection of a preferred buyer for the steelmaker Arrium, while warning that further taxpayer funding will be needed from the Federal and SA governments.
