Former HSU national secretary Craig Thomson is a free man today, but lighter in the pocket, after the Victorian County Court decided against sending him to prison for stealing $5,000 from the union.
Former HSU leader Craig Thomson has been warned that his three-month jail sentence could be extended if he fails in his appeal against convictions for 65 counts of theft and obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
Victorian Labor has committed to abolishing the state's construction industry code of practice, repealing the Napthine Government’s anti-picket laws and creating two new public holidays if elected on November 29.
The Napthine Government has introduced more stringent requirements for companies tendering for public sector construction work under a new code and has imposed its first sanction on a builder since guidelines took effect in 2012.
Senior Victorian Government Minister Robert Clark has told the HR Nicholls Society that he has drawn on all three of his portfolios to combat bad behaviour in the building industry and has flagged changes to strengthen the guidelines for contractors seeking state government work.
A long-time power station employee who claimed to have been "oddly unsuccessful" in six promotion applications has failed to convince a tribunal that he was discriminated against because of his union or industrial activity.
The Productivity Commission in a new report has repeated its call for governments to adopt Victorian-style procurement guidelines to regulate substandard IR conduct in the construction industry, but has warned they might need to be modified to avoid a clash with the Fair Work Act.
A tribunal has temporarily banned from legal practice a solicitor who engaged in "intolerable, disgraceful and dishonourable" conduct when he s--ually harassed a legal trainee on eleven occasions in 2011.
The Heydon Royal Commission has raised the possibility that the CFMEU's bans on Boral concrete supplies might have contravened anti-cartel and blackmail laws, in addition to flouting secondary boycott provisions.
In a testy exchange with CFMEU barrister John Agius SC this morning, Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon has ruled that airing a building company director's secret recording of a telephone call with a union organiser was not unlawful because it was in the public interest for it to be played.
