Following on from its wins at Sydney and Melbourne independent bookstores, RAFFWU is leading strikes and work bans at Berkelouw Books and Harry Hartog, where it says workers remain on a small-cohort 2012 "zombie" agreement that the union says pays "poverty wages" and should never have been approved.
The FAAA says it will no longer allow the "effluxion of time to be used as a weapon against workers", after protracted efforts to confirm a regional airline's cabin crew remained in favour of a majority support determination backfired in the FWC.
The NSW Industrial Court has fined the state's nurses and midwives union $130,000 for its "flagrant and unapologetic" flouting of multiple anti-strike orders during pay negotiations with the Minns Government that have since morphed into a major gender undervaluation case.
The FWC has rejected an AMWU bid to bargain for a standalone agreement for maintenance workers at BHP's WA iron ore operations, saying any negotiation difficulties are due to the "brevity" and "paucity" of meetings and not that BHP has focused too much on its larger production worker population.
The Offshore Alliance and ETU are up in arms after Bechtel warned them that unless they drop their "intractable" 30% wage demands for the Pluto Train 2 Project by Monday, it will bar them from bargaining meetings and deal only with the AMWU and CFMEU.
Victoria's Catholic school teachers and support staff have rejected a non-union agreement offer, while the IEU says support is growing for its application for a single interest bargaining authorisation through which it is seeking to secure a statewide deal.
The TWU is threatening strikes in the cash-in-transit industry in three states - with 99% of Victorian Armaguard workers already voting in favour - arguing its hand has been forced by a lack of progress in pay talks, eight months after the union's novel bid to rope-in the industry's major customers to secure pay rises.
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".
With a hearing of the WMWA's majority support determination application looming, BHP has agreed to start bargaining for an agreement to cover its Pilbara port operations.
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.
