A workplace ban on employees accessing leave to participate in a union-led rally on Monday has been overturned, on an interlocutory basis, by the Federal Circuit Court, after it accepted the ETU's argument that the move breached workers' general protections.
Awards should be limited to one per industry, with the FWC establishing a "new definition for unsociable hours" for each of them and determining "economy-wide" penalty rates, Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott has told a Sydney University gathering.
The High Court will determine whether employers can circumvent sham contracting provisions by utilising a third party, such as a labour hire company, to indirectly engage workers, after the FWO today won special leave to challenge a full Federal Court ruling.
The MUA has told the FWC that sacked stevedoring workers at Hutchison's Port Botany terminal, who last night temporarily won their jobs back, have been unable to do so because security guards are preventing access to the site.
The Federal Court has this evening granted an interlocutory order sought by the MUA to stop stevedore Hutchison Ports from proceeding with plans to dismiss almost 100 employees at its Sydney and Brisbane container terminals.
The MUA told an interlocutory hearing in Brisbane today that stevedore Hutchison should reinstate 97 workers from its Port Botany and Brisbane container terminals, because the company had breached its agreement when it engaged in tokenistic rather than substantive consultation with its workforce.
The FWBC has had a partial victory after a court ruled that 74 individual workers engaged in unprotected industrial action at Perth's $1.2 billion children's hospital construction site in 2013.
A key witness to a $100,000 payment by a builder to the CFMEU construction and general division's NSW branch has told the Heydon Royal Commission that he felt some hostility towards the union's former secretary, Andrew Ferguson.
Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon says he now won't be delivering the annual Sir Garfield Barwick Address that is hosted by the Liberal Party, but the ACTU and Labor Party are calling on him to stand down or for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to reverse his "captain's pick".
Four unions today started protected industrial action at the Melbourne-based plasma and vaccines manufacturer CSL Ltd, on the same day it announced a $US1.4 billion net profit.
