The FWC has panned rail operator Qube for "reneging" on an in-principle enterprise deal with the RTBU, after rejecting the union's bid to terminate industrial action that allegedly presented a threat to community safety and welfare.
Chevron's directly-employed workforce on its Wheatstone offshore LNG platforms has overwhelmingly rejected a non-union deal in a ballot that closed last week, according to the Offshore Alliance.
Virgin's groundbreaking bid for an intractable bargaining declaration is "the quintessential bargaining scenario which the Parliament would have had in mind when enacting the IBD regime", it claims, while the FWC has allowed the ACTU to intervene in the case.
The FWC decided this week to terminate rather than suspend industrial action at the Australian Rail Track Authority, because the parties' "entrenched" positions made it "unlikely any significant progress would be made" if it ordered a pause, according to newly-released reasons.
A FWC full bench will next month hear a Virgin Australia subsidiary's bid for an intractable bargaining declaration, in the first test of the Secure Jobs legislation's deadlock-breaking provision, while the tribunal will consider in late August RAFFWU's bid to terminate the world's largest company's enterprise agreement.
The FWC has refused to suspend engineers' industrial action at a Virgin Australia subsidiary while their employer pursues an intractable bargaining declaration, in an early test of the new Secure Jobs provision.
Svitzer Australia workers have voted up a new national towage deal despite the MUA urging members to reject it in a late about-turn prompted by concerns that a union-proposed clause might let the company "outsource at any time" following consultation.
The FWC's national practice leader for bargaining has started the clock on compulsory conciliation while a strike vote is conducted, having also used one of the first applications under new workplace laws to suggest that while the "recency" of the provisions made a case for endorsing an unapproved ballot agent, the bar will be higher in future.
A leading labour law academic has told an IR conference that expanding the FWC's power to arbitrate agreement negotiations will be "the single biggest challenge" posed by the Secure Jobs changes, while the head of a peak state employer group's law firm says it is the "Damoclesean threat of the sword" that will bring people to the table.
As the FWC prepares for the Secure Jobs's bargaining and industrial action components to start on June 6, it has signalled that it plans to devote a substantial amount of members' time to the new mandatory pre-industrial-action conferences to try to facilitate agreements and will expect a similar commitment from parties.
