A FWC member has found no plausible reason for a boilermaker's co-workers and managers to conspire to have him sacked for allegedly drawing a p-nis on a client's fuel tanker, concluding that the more likely explanation lay in a colleague's suggestion that he simply had a "brain fart".
Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt has this morning introduced legislation empowering him to put the CFMEU's construction and general division and its branches in the hands of an administrator.
An IR legal expert predicts the Federal Court case seeking to put the CFMEU construction division's national office and four branches into administration will not be required if federal legislation to be introduced this week mirrors a NSW bill.
The FWC has declined to order a worker to stop s-xually harassing a colleague after accepting he regretted his "inappropriate" remark and that the employer would reduce future interaction between the two employees "as much as possible".
NSW IR Minister Sophie Cotsis has told Parliament a bill to place the CFMEU construction and general division's State branch into administration for five years "strikes the balance" between not interfering in unions' important role and stamping out "corruption and gross misconduct".
The High Court has granted the ACCC special leave to challenge the full Federal Court's quashing of a finding that the CFMEU's construction division induced and had knowing involvement in major building company J Hutchinson's unlawful boycott of a non-union waterproofing subcontractor.
The Federal Court has imposed a record penalty on a sushi restaurant chain to "disabuse" employers of the notion that penalties for underpayments are "an acceptable cost of doing business" and recommended that the Fair Work Ombudsman refer its chief executive's potential flouting of tax and migration laws to the ATO, Department of Home Affairs and ASIC.
