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.
The Turnbull Government is seeking to make a direct link between the Heydon Royal Commission's findings and the ABCC legislation that looks set to be a double-dissolution trigger, but there is no concrete policy connection between the two, according to a leading IR academic.
The FWC has acceded to an FWBC bid to impose restrictions for 12 months on CFMEU officials exercising their entry rights across three states and the NT.
The FWC has confirmed the MUA's right to represent "waterside workers" employed by the construction contractor for the Darwin Harbour facilities being built as part of INPEX's major Ichthys LNG project.
The AMWU has failed in its bid to obtain an entry permit for an organiser involved in the notorious Westgate Bridge dispute because imposing additional permit conditions would amount to "no more than shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted", says the FWC.
The Heydon Royal Commission has recommended that the Turnbull Government introduce special legislation to disqualify officers of the CFMEU who are deemed by Parliament to be not to be fit and proper persons, while stopping short of recommending the union's deregistration.
The CFMEU is considering whether to appeal after it was refused permission to hold talks in a BHP Coal mine's dragline crib rooms because it was a "functional work area", rather than a meal or break area.
An FWC full bench has upheld a decision to grant an entry permit to CFMEU construction and general division Queensland branch secretary Michael Ravbar, and dismissed the FWBC’s arguments that he was vicariously liable for the behaviour of other union officials as "riddled with unsubstantiated hyperbole".
