ASX top 100 company Asciano, which estimates that its subsidiary Patrick's last bruising bargaining round cost it $21 million, is calling for a greater role for the Fair Work Commission in "agreement facilitation".
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
Unions are seeking authorisation for industrial action at the massive Gorgon gas project, after workers employed by its largest contractor resoundingly voted down an agreement that would have provided an extra day off in each 35-day roster cycle.
The High Court will today hear the CFMEU's argument that Boral can't use court discovery processes to force the union to produce documents that might expose it to punishment for contempt for allegedly defying injunctions on Victoria's Regional Rail project.
The head of Networks NSW, which owns the power "poles and wires" entities that are to be privatised if the Coalition wins Saturday's NSW election, is pushing for FWC approval of agreements to be conditional on them undergoing an objective "productivity test" and is backing calls for the creation of a separate FWC appeals jurisdiction.
The CFMEU construction and general division's "cavalier attitude" to court orders has cost it another $125,000, with the Federal Court finding it in contempt of undertakings not to block access to a Victorian wind farm project last year.
In further legal fallout from the 2012 Grocon dispute, the Federal Court has ruled that the CFMEU and eight of its officials unlawfully coerced the company to agree to its demand to employ union-nominated shop stewards when they blocked access to the Myer Emporium and McNab Avenue sites.
The Fair Work Act's provisions for ending safety-threatening industrial action are broader than those of its predecessor, a senior FWC member has ruled in her reasons for suspending planned NSW power industry stoppages earlier this month.
A group of leading IR academics has made a preemptive strike against any attempt to use the Coalition's "freedoms" inquiry to diminish the immunity from common law liability conferred by the Fair Work Act's protected industrial action provisions.
