The AMWU is accusing Unilever of seeking to "gag" Streets workers from using social media to vent their frustration at plans to terminate an enterprise agreement at a Sydney ice cream plant.
The FWC has granted the CFMEU standing as an intervener to scrutinise whether an agreement passes the better off overall test, despite an employer's objections that it has no members affected, has a commercial interest in opposing deals and is a generally disreputable organisation.
Coles and the SDA have agreed on a draft two-year deal that provides higher penalty rates, but has lower annual pay rises for workers who are already on elevated wage rates.
The IEU has flagged rolling stopworks in more than 500 NSW and ACT schools next term after the FWC held that, just as the Roman Catholic Church's dioceses are in "full communion" they are also engaged in a "common enterprise", so its employees are eligible to take protected action.
A CFMEU-backed class action brought against an employer for allegedly underpaying 150 workers more than $1 million for travel time stands to recast agreement wording on the precise location where a job begins and ends.
In the first test of whether Queensland's laws regulating peaceful assemblies can be used to block pickets and protests during industrial disputes, the state's Supreme Court has rejected mining company Glencore's argument that such activities can't be authorised.
Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie today introduced a private members' bill to prevent the Fair Work Commission from agreeing to employer requests to terminate expired enterprise agreements that leave workers worse off.
The FWC looks set to reduce by a week its hearings into an application by Coles nightfill worker Penny Vickers to terminate the 2011 agreement, after warning that granting further extensions could render her case moot if the retailer gets a new agreement approved.
Employers should be unable to terminate enterprise agreements that leave workers worse off, according to a Senate inquiry considering so-called 'corporate avoidance' of the Fair Work Act.
Catholic school employers have failed to convince the FWC to refer to a full bench its challenge to the right of NSW and ACT teachers to take protected action on the basis their dioceses are not "single interest employers" as required by the Fair Work Act.
