In a significant decision on the ambit of intractable bargaining determinations, a FWC full bench has found it has the power to require employers to backpay former workers.
A FWC presidential member has lauded the Secure Jobs' compulsory post-PABO conferences that enable the Commission to "jumpstart" and accelerate bargaining, while at the same time reducing the incentive for unions to take industrial action.
A FWC bench has emphasised the tribunal's need to properly scrutinise proposed agreements in finding that a senior tribunal member failed to follow principles of open justice when refusing to provide a union with the names of applicants for a mining services deal ultimately found to be a sham.
Employers with significant casual workforces have been given a guided tour of new legislative filters for assessing whether proposed deals are genuinely agreed, in a FWC decision focussing on the Fair Work Act's "employed at the time" provision.
A government agency has been scolded for failing to pay travel allowances after admitting that it slipped its notice that the claims had been processed manually by two firefighters, one of whom retired while the other went on extended leave.
In a significant decision the ETU describes as "deeply troubling", the Federal Court has found full-time agreement-covered FIFO electricians working on a Fortescue mine project do not accrue paid leave during their monthly "rest and recreation" off-swing.
In a shot in the arm for a paramedic transferred 350km away after an investigator found he bullied a female colleague, a full bench has ruled that bullying falls within a "spectrum of seriousness" and ordered the redetermination of whether he engaged in serious misconduct.
The FWC has made SJSP orders putting WorkPac and Skilled on-hire production operators at a Glencore coal mine in line for substantial pay rises despite accepting it might make labour supply contracts "wholly unviable" and result in job losses.
The FWC has "reluctantly" found that in focusing only on the positives an employer failed to adequately explain a newly consolidated deal opposed by one branch of the HSU but supported by its embattled Victorian No 1 branch.
The FWC has granted the RTBU an intractable bargaining declaration that will require the tribunal to weigh into whether Qube wrongly interpreted a 2019 deal as providing all-in loaded rates, at the same time as the union is seeking to have a related multi-million dollar Federal Court underpayments claim continue as a worker-led class action.
