An emergency care flight service has withdrawn objections to an ANMF protected action ballot of nurses and midwives, and the FWC has found no reason to block it, after the union inserted a caveat to protect patient safety.
The FWC has refused to stay a single interest bargaining authorisation for six Chemist Warehouse franchisees while an appeal is underway, because it could "derail" negotiations for several months, when the permit only stands for a year.
Following on from its wins at Sydney and Melbourne independent bookstores, RAFFWU is leading strikes and work bans at Berkelouw Books and Harry Hartog, where it says workers remain on a small-cohort 2012 "zombie" agreement that the union says pays "poverty wages" and should never have been approved.
A FWC member has criticised a union's "sneaky" application for a protected action ballot at one of nine interconnected workplaces as potentially "dragg[ing]" members into an industrial campaign "they did not authorise".
In a significant ruling on stand downs, a full bench has upheld a challenge to a hospital's refusal to pay a nurse who declined redeployment to another ward due to a work ban, but found on redetermination that the employer was otherwise entitled to withhold payment.
The TWU is threatening strikes in the cash-in-transit industry in three states - with 99% of Victorian Armaguard workers already voting in favour - arguing its hand has been forced by a lack of progress in pay talks, eight months after the union's novel bid to rope-in the industry's major customers to secure pay rises.
The Western Mine Workers Alliance is considering industrial action at BHP Iron Ore's South Flank and Area C sites in the Pilbara, after the company put forward a draft "baseline" agreement that fails to provide any annual increases, which unions claim is "extremely rare" in the sector.
Grave diggers and funeral workers are set to vote on strikes and cremation bans after the FWC rejected claims that no amount of notice will avert "significant consequences", while also backing the AWU's objection to the employer's proposed survey of its workforce to gauge its views.
The FWC has refused a bid for a three-month suspension of industrial action at a major aluminium smelter, finding that it would hinder bargaining, and that the AWU had already made significant concessions to ensure that the plant would remain operational.
The QNMU is backing "in the strongest terms" a Crisafulli Liberal Government pay offer said to retain a nation-leading edge for most nurses and midwives by boosting their "earning potential", while public school teachers have accepted a Queensland IRC recommendation to pause industrial action for a month.
