FWC President Adam Hatcher today timetabled Chevron's applications for three intractable bargaining declarations at its Western Australian LNG operations, setting down a full bench hearing hearing from September 22, while also directing the company to resume mediation.
The Fair Work Act's continuing focus on single-enterprise bargaining, along with weak underpinning awards and supported bargaining's restriction to multi-employer rather than sector-wide bargaining, will limit the new stream's capacity to achieve "decent wages" for low-paid female employees, according to leading IR academics.
The FWC has rejected the HSU's bid to extend a zombie deal for two years, backing the ASU's position in finding it failed the BOOT, and granting only a four month reprieve to negotiate a new agreement.
A logistics company has failed to win approval for a greenfields deal as it only notified the MUA's WA branch despite provisions for future national expansion, and it offers "substantially inferior" pay and conditions.
A full Federal Court has today rejected a bid by the CFMMEU's manufacturing division to overturn the FWC's decision to deny it a ballot of members to win approval to disamalgamate from the broader union.
A judge has thrown out a Bing Lee worker's race and sex discrimination case, saying it demonstrates "the perils of litigating hurt feelings", after she embellished events "which stem predominantly from unremarkable, collegiate 'small talk', and petty workplace disagreements to cast them in a more nefarious light".
As Chevron workers prepare to start industrial action this afternoon and the FWC continues week-long talks to resolve the underlying bargaining dispute for its Wheatstone downstream and Gorgon facilities, the tribunal's president will conduct a preliminary hearing next week of the company's bid for an intractable bargaining declaration for its Wheatstone platform.
The IEU is urging Queensland's Catholic school teachers and support staff to reject a "punitive" proposed agreement that it claims will deliver the biggest cuts to their working conditions in two decades, but the employer says there are "no cuts".
The FWC will probe potential "wider-scale abuse" of agreement-making under the Fair Work Act after quashing the approval of a Chevron contractor's labour hire deal made with six "employees" in a sham process "entirely lacking in authenticity and moral authority".