Former NUW NSW branch secretary Derrick Belan has been sentenced to four years' jail on 60 charges that involved more than $650,000 of union funds, including personal spending on a tattoo, Botox treatments, holidays and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Women will make up at least half of all members elected to the Independent Education Union's federal council branches following a rule change that secretary Chris Watt says is a "symbolic" first step that he hopes will prompt its state branches to look at their own structures.
The Registered Organisations Commission has initiated a prosecution of the AWU's Victorian branch and its former secretary, Cesar Melhem, for allegedly failing to remove 2,000 unfinancial members from the books over a five-year period through to 2013.
An FSU election that opens later this month looks likely to be heavily contested, with the AEC verifying the nominations of would-be challengers in the first ballot since national secretary Julia Angrisano replaced Fiona Jordan in the wake of a bitter brawl with the executive.
Two years after a forecasts of a membership wipeout fuelled soon-abandoned merger discussions with United Voice, the AMWU has approved a major overhaul of its structure and governance to take effect from July 1 next year.
The AWMU is holding a three-day special national conference to consider a plan to overhaul its governance, structure and operations, as it seeks to revive a membership base that has dropped by more than half over the past 15 years.
The Federal Court has agreed to delay the trial of the AWU's bid to block the Registered Organisation Commission investigation that led to police raids on the union's offices last year.
Employer groups have failed in their bid to delay the March 27 CFMEU-MUA-TCFU amalgamation, but have taken solace from a senior FWC member's observation that their April 9 appeal to an FWC full bench "surmounts the fairly low bar of being arguable".
Former union leader Julie Bignell is among of a group of senior elected officials and employees of Together Queensland who have complained to the ROC and privacy commissioner over alleged unlawful and unauthorised covert in-house surveillance of their emails and keystrokes during a protracted merger process completed three years ago.
