The Victorian government plans to intervene for a second time in a lengthy bargaining dispute over a new enterprise agreement covering Esso's offshore oil and gas workers in Bass Strait.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected a push to give employers more scope to refuse requests by casual workers to convert to full-time and part-time work.
Five migrant fruit pickers at the centre of a $10 million Federal Court claim against a labour hire company and its owners are seeking to be recognised as casuals, alleging their contracts for piecework were invalid and based average take home pay on an unrealistic workload.
The FWC for the second time in five weeks has warned of the serious potential consequences of signing statutory declarations in support of agreement approval applications without verifying the information.
Unilever has successfully challenged a requirement to count employees' prior periods of casual and seasonal work when calculating length of service for redundancy payouts, an FWC full bench calling into question a landmark 2016 majority finding that casual work should be included.
A company that relied on an FWC online calculator to notify workers of a ballot has had the resulting agreement thrown out for failing to provide the statutory seven-day access period, prompting a senior Commission member to lament his inability to "overcome what is clearly a procedural failure".
The CFMMEU has begun Federal Court action that seeks to hold John Holland and CPB Contracting vicariously liable for subcontractors' alleged underpayment of wages and entitlements on Canberra's light rail project, with the union seeking to recover $700,000 and impose penalties.
The FSU has asked the Federal Court to rule that a global currency exchange company is covered by the banking, finance and insurance award, claiming it shifted to the retail award after the recent reduction in penalty rates.
The Federal Court has upheld Qantas' right to refuse access to documents sought over a "leave burn" program for aircraft engineers, in a decision a union leader says raises the bar for entering workplaces to prove breaches.
The FWC has given Workplace Minister Craig Laundy the go-ahead to put his case that the MFB agreement should be rejected because it contains discriminatory and objectionable terms and fails the BOOT.
