Business groups have told the FWC that it is prohibited from varying or revoking its decision to cut Sunday and public holiday penalty rates and have slammed United Voice over its call for the case to be immediately concluded so that it can launch a judicial review.
As the FWC calls for submissions on an employer bid to ditch the term "penalty rates" and replace it with "additional remuneration", a senior union-clientele lawyer is warning of a "slippery slope" if recognition of a need to compensate those working unsociable hours is removed.
The FWC has approved an agreement for 2,000 staffers for members of Federal Parliament, despite union claims it was not genuinely agreed because "voting irregularities" caused by the electronic voting system disenfranchised substantial numbers of workers.
The Federal Court has acknowledged in imposing more than $100,000 in fines on the AMWU, AWU and CFMEU and their organisers for taking unlawful industrial action and adverse action against Australian Paper that the unions only became involved when they "properly responded to the workers' needs".
The Federal Court has today imposed almost $600,000 in fines on the CFMEU and 10 officials for organising two days of industrial action at nine Kane Constructions sites three years ago.
The CPSU is ramping-up its campaign to break a bargaining deadlock at the Department of Human Services, with rolling stoppages set to start next week, but the department anticipates the effect of the union's action will be "minimal".
The timetable for having the Registered Organisations Commission up and running appears to have slipped, with a new target adopted for it to be in place by the end of June.
The FWC has issued a new entry permit to a CFMEU official despite his "serious lack of diligence" in misplacing his old one, while it has granted a fresh permit to another of the union's officials – a former acting national secretary of the FSU - after finding it need not "rigidly apply" a general rule that applicants have completed entry training within the previous three months.
The first combined conference of the MUA and the CFMEU appears to have given fresh momentum to the planned merger between the two militant unions, while a new Left-Right union alliance has emerged within the WA branch of the ALP.
