A sacked CFMEU (construction and general division) elected organiser has lodged an unfair dismissal claim with the Fair Work Commission and is taking the matter to the union's national executive.
NUW members at a Smith's Snackfoods warehouse in Brisbane are staging a lunchroom "sit-in" after the company said they would not be paid while they were imposing protected bans.
The Federal Circuit Court has drawn a link between s-xual assault laws and the Fair Work Act's sham contracting prohibitions in finding that a floor repairing business was not "reckless" as to whether five of its independent contractors were actually employees.
The Fair Work Commission will have to consider whether enterprise agreements contain productivity improvements before it approves them, while unions face additional hurdles to protected action, under the Coalition's latest IR bill.
Unions are pushing for James Hardie to top up the scheme that compensates asbestosis victims, while threatening legal action to block any move to switch to payment via instalments.
The TWU has told Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon that his inquiry does not have the expertise to make findings or recommendations on superannuation and training, and that there is no evidence before him to support stricter regulation of trade unions.
MUA members have ended a three-week sit-in onboard an oil tanker in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay after the threat of legal action against individual seafarers.
The head of the Australian Human Resources Institute has called for a "significant restructure" of the Fair Work laws, including a return to statutory individual contacts and the revamping of the Fair Work Commission, and has also criticised the Federal Government for its delayed Productivity Commission IR review.
The Fair Work Commission has ruled that a power company acted lawfully and reasonably when it imposed restrictions on its employees participating in political activities, making public comment and disclosing confidential information, but it went too far with its requirement that they abide by a code of conduct containing the prohibitions.
The NSW Supreme Court has ruled that the ANZ Bank did not need to prove that an executive leaked a doctored email to the media before sacking him without notice, only that it had formed the "opinion" that he had.
