The aviation industry is now firmly on the frontlines of the battle to equalise pay for directly-employed and labour hire workers working side-by-side, after cabin crew unions made further applications for same-job, same-pay orders against labour suppliers to the Qantas group.
The CFMEU construction division's Queensland branch has suffered multiple setbacks in its bargaining stoush with the head contractor of the state's $7 billion Cross River Rail project, with workers voting up a new deal put directly by the company and the FWC separately issuing two orders stopping unprotected industrial action.
A notable difference between the federal legislation putting the CFMEU's construction division into administration and the FWC general manager's court application is that the former takes control of all state and territory branches, according to labour law academic Anthony Forsyth.
A FWC member has found no plausible reason for a boilermaker's co-workers and managers to conspire to have him sacked for allegedly drawing a p-nis on a client's fuel tanker, concluding that the more likely explanation lay in a colleague's suggestion that he simply had a "brain fart".
Victoria's Allan Labor Government has begun consulting on its plan to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in settlements of workplace sexual harassment cases.
Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt has this morning introduced legislation empowering him to put the CFMEU's construction and general division and its branches in the hands of an administrator.
An IR legal expert predicts the Federal Court case seeking to put the CFMEU construction division's national office and four branches into administration will not be required if federal legislation to be introduced this week mirrors a NSW bill.
The FWC has declined to order a worker to stop s-xually harassing a colleague after accepting he regretted his "inappropriate" remark and that the employer would reduce future interaction between the two employees "as much as possible".
