The FWC says a proposed amalgamation of the Australian Hotels Association and the Accommodation Association of Australia will give the latter a "strong voice" within the merged employer body and held that only its members will have to vote on it in a ballot opening next month.
As ROC staff await their transfer to the FWC, the watchdog has found that a former AEU ACT branch secretary did not improperly use his position, while it is also pursuing the AWU and a CFMMEU mining and energy division Queensland district leader in the Federal Court.
Incoming CFMMEU construction and general division national secretary Zachary (Zach) Smith will take over from the long-serving Dave Noonan in April, after 15 years with the union and serving as leader and assistant leader of the ACT branch for the past three years.
The FWO has hit a new high in the cases it has taken to court, as it continues to target large corporates and adds universities to its priority list, according to the watchdog's annual report.
The ROC has found the IEU WA branch's former secretary appears to have benefited from spending union funds but has decided not to pursue the matter given the time, resources and cost it would require and the branch's desire to drop it.
The ROC has resolved to seek penalties against the AWU in the Federal Court, after an 18-month investigation concluded it had committed 27,000 breaches over nine years of obligations to keep accurate membership records and "significantly overstated" the real numbers.
The CFMMEU has foreshadowed jurisdictional challenges to the applications by two of its divisions to demerge and operate as separate standalone unions, in a sign of lengthy legal proceedings to come.
The leader of the ANMF's West Australian branch, Mark Olson, is stepping down after 24 years in the job and an often mercurial approach, which included taking the view that unions should not "shy away" from the Abbott Government's Heydon royal commission into trade unions.
A lawyer overseeing a merger of the TWU and the Virgin pilots' union says a FWC finding that they are not amalgamating opens the way to a faster and more cost-effective process and might have implications for other unions with similar eligibility criteria.
