The FWO will enlist local employer groups in a three-month auditing blitz of more than 400 businesses in regions where workers are making "persistent" requests for assistance, including Perth, Adelaide and Dandenong.
Melbourne's trams will be hit with a legally-protected four-hour stoppage tomorrow, as the bargaining deadlock continues between the RTBU and the city's privatised transport operators.
The state-owned company that runs the electricity "poles and wires" network supplying Sydney, the NSW Central Coast and the Hunter region has announced a first round of 550 job cuts, which are being hotly opposed by the ETU.
Complaints about the FSU's handing of an official's bullying complaint against deputy secretary Geoff Derrick are included in an extraordinary plea for assistance emailed this morning by national secretary Fiona Jordan to more than 28,000 members.
The CPSU is encouraging ATO employees to vote 'no' to a revised agreement offer, while federal public servants gear up for strikes next week in what the union says will be the sector's biggest wave of industrial action in 30 years.
Two employees have failed to win back more than 2,000 hours in sick leave credits they lost when their employment moved from a publicly owned corporation to a private entity after the NSWIRC found there was no transfer of employment.
The Senate this afternoon voted down Labor's motion to address the Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, with a request to remove Dyson Heydon as head of the royal commission into unions.
Esso Australia has confirmed it is continuing daily lockouts of maintenance workers over stalled enterprise bargaining at its Bass Strait oil and gas operations.
The Productivity Commission's push for Fair Work Commission members to be appointed for five year terms and to include more non-lawyers is based on a "grave misunderstanding" of the Commission's functions and jurisdiction and will affect the "standing of the body", according to recently retired Senior Deputy President Alan Boulton AO.
