The Coalition's legislation that would raise maximum fines from $750.000 to $10 million for secondary boycotts is no certainty to become law after Nick Xenophon Team senators joined the Greens and Labor to declare it would not support it.
The ACTU has taken aim at the proposed public interest test for union amalgamations, saying there is no basis for the Turnbull Government's claim that it is the equivalent of the competition test for corporate mergers.
The FWC has allowed the Flight Attendants' Association to jettison plans to merge its two divisions, while a former secretary might face penalties after admitting he failed to provide budgets from 2006 to 2012.
The FWC's minimum wage panel has decided against holding a preliminary hearing to consider new research on the budget required to sustain a healthy lifestyle, after the proposal only won support from Catholic employers.
Coles and the SDA have agreed on a draft two-year deal that provides higher penalty rates, but has lower annual pay rises for workers who are already on elevated wage rates.
An FWC full bench is today hearing a challenge to a Registered Organisations Commission ruling that Queensland's Together union breached the registered organisations regulations, exposing it to penalties, when its leader made a "considered decision" to delay lodgement of election information.
The High Court has this morning refused a CFMEU bid for special leave to challenge a full Federal Court majority ruling that increased penalties twelve-fold after after accepting that it could not treat a "lawful request" or a party's motivation for taking coercive industrial action as a mitigating factor when determining fines.
The IEU has flagged rolling stopworks in more than 500 NSW and ACT schools next term after the FWC held that, just as the Roman Catholic Church's dioceses are in "full communion" they are also engaged in a "common enterprise", so its employees are eligible to take protected action.
The Federal Court has imposed record fines totalling more than $2.4 million against the CFMEU national and NSW branches and nine officials over breaches at Barangaroo in 2014, but says that without "legislative action" even higher penalties currently available under the law might not deter the militant union.
The ACTU's new economic manifesto reveals the movement as the latest convert to the anti-globalisation sentiment sweeping the world, with strengthened calls for a focus on 'buy Australian' policies.
