United Voice and the NUW are a step closer to conducting a member ballot on whether to merge to become Australia's biggest blue-collar union, with the FWC this week issuing a community of interest declaration acknowledging their shared industrial interests.
United Voice and the NUW are pushing ahead with merger plans to create Australia's biggest blue-collar union, with almost 156,000 members and an organising model that seeks to tackle low-paid labour hire jobs as well as part-time and casual work.
A Full Federal Court has dismissed the Australian Mines and Metals Association's application to quash two FWC decisions approving the merger of the CFMEU, MUA and TCFU, offering a brief history lesson as to why outstanding civil penalty proceedings posed no barrier to the amalgamation.
A Federal Court judge has evoked the memory of the BLF's deregistration in the course of handing out maximum fines to the CFMMEU for "deplorable" breaches by a past State branch president, suggesting that any organisation that fails to rein in aberrant behaviour "cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form".
The NT Master Builders Association is citing a "heavy compliance burden" for seeking to cancel its status as a registered organisation and shift to a corporate structure, a move the Registered Organisations Commission says is now "very unusual".
The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union says it will not be pressured into applying for registration until it is ready, as the Australian Industry Group seeks to constrain its challenge to a proposed relaxation of part-time provisions in the four-yearly review of the Fast Food Industry Award.
The CFMMEU has today challenged employer groups' standing to appeal the approval of its merger, arguing they are not sufficiently affected as they will be dealing with the same officials doing the same work to the same standards, only wearing different t-shirts.
The head of the newly-merged CFMMEU, Michael O'Connor, says the mega-union will work "slowly and carefully" through the early days of creating the new organisation.
Employer groups have failed in their bid to delay the March 27 CFMEU-MUA-TCFU amalgamation, but have taken solace from a senior FWC member's observation that their April 9 appeal to an FWC full bench "surmounts the fairly low bar of being arguable".
The Fair Work Commission has reserved its decision on whether to permit an appeal against the approval of the CFMEU's merger with the MUA and the TCFU, employer groups signalling their challenge wouldn't end there if refused.
