The MUA has established its right to represent one of three teams of workers it sought access to at the Gorgon LNG project's processing site, after the FWC found their principal functions "lie at the heart of a waterside worker".
A CFMEU official who told a Lend Lease project manager he wanted to "smash" someone during a site visit has failed to overturn a decision to suspend his entry permit.
An FWC full bench majority has overruled a presidential member's refusal to issue an entry permit to a CFMEU organiser, saying he set a "higher bar" than usual because of the union's adverse track record.
An FWC full bench majority has upheld a decision to refuse a CFMEU organiser an entry permit while noting that the union failed to take up an opportunity to propose conditions.
The re-elected Turnbull government will pursue changes to workplace laws covering union right of entry, according to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash.
The FWC has knocked back an application for orders preventing three union officials entering the Ichthys LNG project, as well as the organisation of combined union meetings on site.
Right of entry permit holders can't hold discussions with employees in the workplace before or after work because it creates "uncertainty" around employee and employers' rights and obligations and increased the likelihood of disputes, the FWC has found.
The FWC has suspended the entry permit of a CFMEU official who behaved in an "aggressive and threatening manner" when he told a project manager at a construction site he wanted to "smash" someone.
The FWC has decried the "normalisation" of a culture of lawlessness within the CFMEU, in decisions refusing two officials' applications for entry permits after they failed the "fit and proper person" test, but granting entry rights to another organiser who allegedly threatened to start a Boral-style "war" against a major construction company.
Fortescue Metals Group has failed in a bid to block the CEPU from seeking a declaration that it unduly delayed entry to its WA branch secretary after a 2013 workplace fatality, with a court finding WA's non-harmonised OHS laws are no barrier to entering sites under the Fair Work Act.
