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.
In the lead-up to the AWU wielding its numbers at the ACTU Congress in July, the union has commissioned a "modern membership project" after the Registered Organisations Commission recommended that it undertake an external audit to correct historical discrepancies in its enrolments.
The ACTU is seeking to hire a fundraising and bequests program coordinator as part of a strategy to diversify its funding base, which largely relies on fees and levies paid by affiliated unions.
Requirements for bargaining representatives from this week to disclose financial benefits stemming from enterprise agreements before workers vote on them will make it easier to track the revenue the deals generate for unions, employers say.
The ROC has told the ASU's national office that it might have undervalued its Melbourne and Canberra property holdings by $2.6 million in its 2016-17 financial report, but the union maintains that it complied with accounting standards in writing-down their value.
The Federal Court has overturned a CEPU decision to strip a long-term delegate of her union roles, after finding that two officials who heard charges against her were "invincibly biased".
The AWU is seeking access to documents on the "political purpose" of the Registered Organisations Commission's decision to investigate past donations by the union, the Federal Court has heard.
