Some 350 maintenance and sustainment workers at the Australian Submarine Corporation's Adelaide headquarters have succeeded in their year-long campaign for pay parity with their Western Australian colleagues, winning an upfront average increase of 18.5%.
A FWC full bench has quashed the approval of a company's CEPU-lodged agreement, found to have been voted up by two workers before it was used to cover AMWU members in a process "entirely lacking in authenticity and moral authority".
The PSA has lost its challenge to a NSW IRC decision said to have "wide ranging" implications for union delegates using workplace emails to communicate with union lawyers, with a special constable facing dismissal for disclosing confidential information to inform its application for a new award.
The AMWU has after more than two years succeeded in gaining FWC approval to expand its eligibility rules so it can get a toehold in BHP's internal labour hire operation.
The AMWU claims in a bid to win coverage of extra classifications at a Queensland mineral field that the AWU has "ignored or failed" to properly service them and left it with the "full burden" of negotiating agreements on their behalf.
In a breakthrough for NSW fisheries officers seeking to carry capsicum spray while patrolling for poachers, the State IRC has refused to terminate work bans after the Department of Primary Industries failed to convince it they seriously risk depleting fish stocks.
The Australian Federal Police has set up a special operation to investigate allegations of criminal conduct in the construction industry and the CFMEU, and already has one new "priority" probe underway, after a July referral from then Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke.
FWC general manager Murray Furlong has referred to the AFP 12 of the almost 800 reports he has received about potentially unlawful conduct or activity by the CFMEU's construction division or its officers and is also seeking intelligence to identify whether any of 10 "leaders in exile" have flouted anti-avoidance provisions, he told a Senate Estimates hearing yesterday.
Long-serving Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association secretary Steve Purvinas says he has resigned to move on to "less stressful" pastures in the face of mounting opposition to his methods.
Sacked CFMEU construction division officials have told the High Court their constitutional challenge to Federal Government legislation placing union branches under administration is a stark reminder that "you cannot do indirectly what you are forbidden to do directly".
