WorkSafe Victoria is "considering its options" after expressing disappointment at Friday's full Federal Court finding that a CFMEU official needed to have a federal entry permit to assist a health and safety representative when invited onto a Victorian construction site.
A Senate inquiry has recommended an employer who gives a union official a $20 bottle of wine for speaking at a conference be exempted from sanctions in the corrupting benefits legislation that is before the House of Representatives today.
The timetable for having the Registered Organisations Commission up and running appears to have slipped, with a new target adopted for it to be in place by the end of June.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has this afternoon introduced legislation that outlaws payments of "corrupting benefits" to unions and imposes penalties on those who provide or receive such payments.
The AWU kicks off its biennial conference today, with new national secretary Daniel Walton seeking to revive falling membership and protect jobs in key industry segments rather than pursue mergers with other unions. Meanwhile, the FWC has been questioning the "integrity" of the union’s reported membership numbers for the five years to 2014.
An FWC full bench majority has upheld a decision to refuse a CFMEU organiser an entry permit while noting that the union failed to take up an opportunity to propose conditions.
Employment Minister Michaelia Cash will lead the push to re-establish the ABCC and to create a specialist regulator of unions, once the Federal parliament resumes on August 30.
Internal divisions within a union over the funding of a redundancy payment to a long-serving administrative employee have boiled over in the Federal Court.
