Boosted delegates' rights will make workplaces more cooperative, potentially increasing productivity and workers' openness to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, according to a report that also warns unions not to fall into a trap with their paid training leave win.
The AWU has abandoned a long history of going it alone in Queensland, re-affiliating with the State's peak union body, while the Mining and Energy Union has also returned to the fold after a shorter absence.
The CFMEU will seek to overturn a recent legal representation ruling, maintaining the FWC got it wrong when it allowed a construction company to have both a barrister and a paid agent appear on its behalf.
Victoria Police rejected a crime scene officer's request for a flexible work arrangement on reasonable business grounds, the FWC has held, while urging the parties to embrace a "better than nothing" compromise.
More than 300 employees of labour provider Workpac placed at Batchfire's Callide thermal coal mine near Biloela are set to receive increases in November of up to $20,000 a year, according to the MEU, after a FWC full bench made its first same-job, same-pay ruling today.
The FWC has approved an Aldi deal with undertakings that expunge labour hire clauses designed, according to the SDA, to circumvent "same-job, same-pay" laws.
Victoria's public sector nurses are set to decide whether to endorse a pay rise of 28% over four years after rejecting an earlier offer and closing hospital beds, while NSW nurses have handed the Minns Government a "business case" for a quick 15% uplift.
Legislation introduced today by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke provides two "pathways" for the CFMEU's manufacturing division to demerge from the broader union.
FWC President Adam Hatcher will conduct a directions hearing on Friday to consider an SDA bid to lift award junior rates for under-18 workers and abolish them altogether for those 18 and above, with the union arguing that age should not be a criterion for setting pay.
