The WA IRC has thrown out a TWU bid to represent waste collectors at a Perth council after finding it would breach a demarcation agreement and ramp-up union rivalry, while noting it has been taking members' dues for nearly three years without telling them it could not represent them.
The author of a book tracing 150 years of campaigning for a shorter Australian working week says it offers crucial lessons for current efforts to win a four-day work week, cut unpaid overtime, and properly account for domestic labour, while AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy considers it part of a "just transition".
After more than 30 years leading CPSU Victoria, Karen Batt appears to have been toppled by challenger Jiselle Hanna, in the first contested ballot in two decades.
Union industrial officers are increasingly being supplanted by external IR lawyers, with the phenomenon most pronounced in "organising" unions, according to the principal of a boutique union-clientele law firm.
The Federal Court has ousted HSU secretary Diana Asmar and has put her Victorian No 1 branch wholly in the hands of administrator Charlie Donnelly until a fresh leadership team is elected, as early as the middle of next year.
Union density has risen for the first time in 13 years and membership has increased by 160,000 in the past two years, while working from home appears to have stabilised at a bit more than a third of employees, new ABS data reveals.
The AWU has abandoned a long history of going it alone in Queensland, re-affiliating with the State's peak union body, while the Mining and Energy Union has also returned to the fold after a shorter absence.
The registered organisations branch of the FWC has unveiled a compliance and enforcement policy in which "common interests" such as cutting red tape are described as being at the "centre" of its regulatory approach.
The Mining and Energy Union's 18-member national governing body will have two positions reserved for women – up from one – after the FWC accepted "persuasive" evidence that it would make the union's leadership more representative.
