In an instructive decision on when employers should communicate major job-cutting proposals to workers, the FWC has endorsed Deakin University's timing but told it to engage at an institution-wide level after finding its 15-area carve-up left "no opportunity" for meaningful consultation.
An academic sacked after criticising climate research is considering a High Court challenge after a full Federal Court quashed a finding that James Cook University's code of conduct is "subordinate" to intellectual freedom protections.
BHP's attempt to win approval of two enterprise deals to entrench an in-house labour hire company that now employs more than 2000 workers across its mining operations has been dealt a major blow by an FWC full bench majority, which has ruled that its failure to properly explain pay arrangements meant the workforce did not genuinely agree.
A union legal officer's mea culpa over unread emails has not been enough to salvage a late appeal against an agreement, after an FWC full bench found it did not excuse such a "sophisticated" organisation failing to identify that the contentious deal had won approval.
A food manufacturing giant has failed to convince an FWC senior member that its new agreement extinguishes the tribunal's jurisdiction to hear a casual conversion dispute brought under the superseded deal.
A university says its union-supported application to insert COVID-19 leave-purchasing and shutdown measures into its agreements will save an estimated $15 million in return for job security commitments, while other tertiary institutions have sought similar arrangements.
The FWC has ordered a major supermarket supplier to resume bargaining after finding that it was using the current pandemic as an excuse to delay meeting with the UWU.
The MUA has vowed to resist what it claims are "common" efforts by stevedoring companies to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to slash wages and conditions on the waterfront.
In a case of curious timing, the FWC has endorsed a council's mid-pandemic scrapping of an enduring work-from-home arrangement on the basis it fell outside the purview of a flexible work agreement clause.
In a significant decision on agreement-making, an FWC full bench has clarified that the tribunal must reject any undertakings that have a "transformative" effect such that they could have affected workers' votes.
