A FWC full bench led by president Adam Hatcher has overturned a two-month suspension of ETU strikes against Transgrid, taking the opportunity to lay out the correct approach to assessing safety commitments when considering whether protected industrial action should be stopped or suspended.
The AFP has failed to convince the FWC that the Australian Federal Police Association's "cursory" approach to providing a list of officers who wanted to continue wearing their "accoutrements and radios" while on strike at airports meant the industrial action was unprotected and should therefore be stopped.
The ETU's refusal to acknowledge that power network operator Transgrid alone dictates when emergency work is required provided the FWC sufficient reason to extend orders preventing certain protected industrial action for a further two months, according to a senior member.
The FWC has late today declined to expedite Transgrid's application for an intractable bargaining application against the ETU, after the power company last week won a two-month suspension of the union's protected action, but lost its bid to block an order for production of documents.
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.
The FWC says it suspended certain ETU work bans on NSW's power transmission network because Transgrid "clearly established" the action threatened lives, safety, health or welfare, but the union is celebrating the rejection of the private operator's latest "substandard" offer.
A FWC full bench has clarified what constitutes "significant" damage to the national economy and when an employer can be considered an "important part" of it, in reasons for overturning the suspension of protected action by sugar industry workers.
MEU members at Batchfire's Callide thermal coal mine in Queensland have overwhelmingly endorsed a protected action ballot, hot on the heels of the FWC's first same-job, same-pay ruling for the site's labour hire workers, who will benefit from any bargaining gains at the site.
The FWC has found two types of proposed industrial action against an employer unlawful because they lack specificity, but has also labelled the company "disingenuous" for objecting to the original PABO, withdrawing its concerns and then re-ventilating them a month later.
A construction company has failed in its bid to stop potential strikes amid claims of union interference in the protected action ballot process, the FWC pointing out that it cannot make orders preventing industrial action yet to be endorsed or notified.
