The Western Mine Workers Alliance is considering industrial action at BHP Iron Ore's South Flank and Area C sites in the Pilbara, after the company put forward a draft "baseline" agreement that fails to provide any annual increases, which unions claim is "extremely rare" in the sector.
The ETU's WA branch is pushing to bargain for a separate agreement for continuing electrical, instrumentation or plumbing workers at the massive Pluto 2 LNG expansion, to uncouple from employees who will be demobilised as the construction phase ends, and is urging workers to vote down a pay offer that "does not pass the pub test".
The NSWNMA has secured its first private sector IBD, after it agreed to a 16% pay rise over four years for Healthscope nurses and midwives, but remained at an impasse on annual leave provisions.
The MEAA has rejected an ABC deal that would have provided a 3% interim pay rise while prohibiting employees from taking industrial action for six-months while they push for 5.5% pay rises each year and a guarantee that AI will not replace human workers.
The ACTU has renewed its call to remove or curb employers' ability to lock out their workforces, after a multinational mining company extended to almost three weeks its freeze on mineworkers returning to the job at an Illawarra coal pit.
The MEU says its members at a Peabody underground coal mine near Wollongong have been "blindsided" by the company's week-long lockout of 160 mineworkers, saying it is a disproportionate response to limited protected action.
Qantas has agreed to top-up the pay of freight workers at subsidiary Australian Air Express by almost $7000 a year to achieve parity with their directly-engaged colleagues after the ASU raised the prospect of lodging a same-job same-pay claim.
Maurice Blackburn's head of employment and industrial law, Josh Bornstein, says he has written a book challenging employers' increasing suppression of free speech to highlight "a major flaw in our democracy" and "a major threat" to workers' rights.
The Health Services Union has won 12 days paid reproductive leave in a deal for about 1600 disability service workers, in a "watershed" development it says could be expanded nationwide, as it bargains to entrench the entitlement in five further agreements.
Wharfies at Qube's bulk and general ports plan to step up protected industrial action with bans and limitations this week in Melbourne, Port Kembla and Brisbane, while warning that strikes are imminent.
