An FWC full bench majority has quashed the approval of a construction agreement containing substandard summertime working time arrangements, but the minority says the CFMMEU should have been denied the leave it sought to overcome its "avoidable error" in failing to object when the Commission initially considered the deal.
Steel giant Bluescope has won a three-year exemption to prioritise the recruitment of women at its Mornington Peninsula manufacturing facility, to address a persistent gender imbalance and an unequal distribution of "power, resources and opportunity" in its community.
The FWC has avoided "unconscionable injustice" to a female Qantas pilot, finding it lacked the power to deal with colleagues' belated challenge to her seniority during a COVID-19-driven "every man for themselves" scramble for the lifeboats.
In an important out-of-hours conduct ruling, the FWC has reinstated a veteran train driver sacked after he told his employer that he faced possible imprisonment for blowing four times over the blood alcohol limit when police breath-tested him on the road.
A diamond retailer held to have sacked a sales manager diagnosed with breast cancer because she planned to take leave to recover from surgery is facing penalties and a compensation bill in the Federal Circuit Court.
An employer rightly deducted 12 hours' pay from mineworkers who took as little as five minutes to secure their machinery and make it safe in preparation for protected action on five occasions across three days, the Federal Court has held.
In a novel use of the Corporations Act in an IR setting, logistics company DHL has secured an urgent interlocutory injunction to stop the UWU procuring alleged confidential information from about 60 shop stewards that might have given it a significant advantage in enterprise negotiations underway across the company's sites.
Retail employers and their part-time employees will be able to agree to extra hours by text message or email, under changes to the industry award that followed a request from the IR minister.
The FWC has upheld a Qube subsidiary's sacking of a truck driver who blamed a positive blood alcohol reading on sucking on three-quarters of a 10-pack of Anticol cough lozenges to counter a dry throat.
The Federal Court has today imposed $100,000 in fines and costs on the CFMMEU and a delegate who stopped work on a construction site due to safety concerns, but has criticised the ABCC for "over-egging" its case and of having "difficulty turning", like "a battleship in full steam" when it learned that the facts had changed.
