A court has fined the CFMEU and two organisers almost $100,000, after finding the union engaged in unlawful coercion and adverse action when it organised a blockade at the $1.6 billion Port of Melbourne expansion project because an employer refused to bargain.
Mining giant Thiess has had a proposed enterprise agreement knocked back because it was not genuinely agreed, with the FWC finding the company chose the three employees who participated in the ballot to "manipulate" the result.
Rio Tinto has agreed to sell its NSW coal interests – including the Coal & Allied operations that were at the centre of the late 1990s battle of the IR "titans" – to Chinese interests for $3.2 billion ($US2.45 billion).
The tone around deadlocked negotiations over a new agreement at Parmalat's Echuca processing plant has shifted dramatically over the past 24 hours, both sides believing a resolution is near after agreeing to divide up and rework contentious clauses before reconvening early next week.
The FWC has chastised an employer for distributing a "partisan" majority support ballot notice that discourages employees from voting to start bargaining.
The CPSU and Department of Border Protection return to the FWC next week for conciliation of their draft workplace determination, while employees of three APS agencies have again rejected offers.
The AWU suspects that iron ore mining giant Fortescue Metals Group is set to move its production workforce onto a newly-approved non-union agreement for a related entity.
WA's Murdoch University has applied to terminate its enterprise agreement, which the NTEU claims could cut academics' pay by 25% to 40% once they fall back onto underlying awards.
Protracted negotiations over oil and gas agreements in the Bass Strait have moved a step closer to arbitration following the Victorian Government's application to terminate bargaining in the face of looming strike action.
A Senate inquiry has urged Public Service Minister Michaelia Cash to intervene in the federal public sector bargaining dispute and soften the "intransigent" Coalition's "brutally hard-line" bargaining policy by relaxing the 2% wages cap and removing the prohibition on backpay, but Government senators have flatly rejected the recommendations.
