Essential Energy is in the FWC seeking to suspend on safety grounds a planned 80-hour strike that starts across NSW tonight, while it has by-passed unions with a replacement agreement offer it is putting directly to its workforce.
An FWO inquiry into housekeeping services reveals that exploitation of vulnerable, overseas workers is rife within the industry, as one of Australia's largest hotel and resort operators agrees to enter into enforceable undertakings with the watchdog in a bid to avoid proceedings over an independent contracting model it established that robbed workers of their correct wages and conditions.
The FWC has found that it has been forced to "go behind" a fundraising call centre's "flimsy" justification for sacking a manager who allegedly disclosed "confidential HR information".
The FWC has reinstated a bus driver sacked for using a de-activated mobile as a music player while on the job and cleaner accused of stealing the pre-start coffee he made in a client's kitchen, while it has upheld QBE's dismissal of an employee suspected of insurance fraud.
Lend Lease has secured an order to prevent further industrial action at a strife-torn hospital construction site until the project's scheduled completion in August, but the FWC has stopped short of finding that the CFMEU and CEPU organised workers to walk off the job.
The CFMEU, CEPU and three individual organisers have been fined a combined total of almost $95,000 for encouraging workers at the Ichthys LNG project to stop work and disrupt a "critical" concrete pour in protest at the project's allegedly inadequate "park and ride" facilities.
A Turnbull Coalition Government, if returned at the July 2 election, will amend the Fair Work Act to make franchisors and parent entities responsible for their franchisees' and subsidiaries' exploitation of vulnerable workers, while increasing penalties tenfold for employers that underpay such workers and fail to keep proper records.
The FWC has allowed an aviation industry employer to engage a lawyer to defend a "complex" unfair dismissal claim by an employee it sacked for allegedly using a fake Facebook profile to proffer his support for the ISIS terrorist group.
