Will Tracey, a key official of the MUA's militant West Australian branch, intends to run for a national leadership position, in a development sure to cause alarm among some shipping employers.
ACTU secretary Dave Oliver faces a leadership challenge from his assistant secretary Tim Lyons in the lead-up to the peak union body's triennial Congress in May.
The Fair Work Commission has ruled that it has no jurisdiction to impose conditions on industrial action when it orders a protected action ballot, rejecting Aurizon's bid for it to require the rail union to guarantee it won't interfere with the transport of perishable or hazardous goods.
The Federal Court has refused to compel three employees to hand over documents to their former employer to help it decide whether to sue them for breaching contract and corporations laws, finding the company had failed to make enough inquiries of its own before seeking discovery orders.
A Fair Work Commission full bench has upheld the sacking of a 65-year-old Thiess worker for forwarding an "inappropriate and offensive" anti-Muslim email, saying he was entitled to hold those views but not to use his employer's computer system to express and propagate them.
A HR manager who believed his chief executive was undermining his autonomy was not constructively dismissed, a senior Fair Work Commission member has ruled in a decision that explores the complex relationship between the two roles.
In a lucrative Christmas/New Year period for the Commonwealth's coffers, the Federal Circuit Court has handed down penalties amounting to more than $580,000 in eight separate cases brought by the Fair Work Ombudsman against companies and their directors for breaches of the Fair Work Act.
The FWC has granted a scope order sought by an employer to break a bargaining deadlock, finding it is proposing a "legimitate and sensible" reconfiguration of agreement coverage that shouldn't be "stymied by fear" fostered by "apparent mistrust and friction" within unions.
NUW members who responded to a lockout by occupying the lunch room at their employer's food flavouring plant in Melbourne have returned to work after the negotiation of an in-principle deal over the weekend.
Coles meatworkers in Victoria and Tasmania were entitled to vote to take protected industrial action because they had been genuinely seeking separate enterprise agreements late last year, a FWC full bench has ruled.
