Unions were wrong to rush into amalgamations and enterprise bargaining without fully assessing the potential impact on their own long-term future, according to Victorian union stalwart Brian Boyd, who retires on Thursday after a decade as Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary and 35 years in the union movement.
In a watershed anti-discrimination ruling, a full Federal Court has found community standards now demand higher compensation for non-economic loss in s--ual harassment cases, and has increased a former Oracle manager's overall damages award from less than $20,000 to $130,000.
The Federal Circuit Court has found that the former operator of a TAB agency is an "employee" eligible to make an adverse action claim, but has ruled that she was dismissed due to a loss of confidence and trust rather than because she exercised a workplace right.
Evidence to be presented to the Heydon Royal Commission by former CFMEU construction and general division NSW branch official Brian Fitzpatrick "reveals a troubling state of lawlessness" in the branch and the union that manifests in their preparedness to go to "war" against companies that incur their displeasure, according to its counsel assisting.
The Fair Work Commission says that excluding supervisor-level employees from enterprise agreements is normal practice, and that those seeking to be included via scope orders need to present strong evidence to win the day.
The Department of Employment has referred to the corporate watchdog allegations that a textile company entered into “contrived arrangements” to avoid paying redundancy entitlements to 60 workers.
A tribunal has temporarily banned from legal practice a solicitor who engaged in "intolerable, disgraceful and dishonourable" conduct when he s--ually harassed a legal trainee on eleven occasions in 2011.
The Fair Work Commission has ordered the MUA not to push for "Australians first" job clauses that might breach anti-discrimination laws during the hotly-contested enterprise bargaining round in the offshore oil and gas services sector.
A ruling by the Fair Work Commission makes it clear that employers can't exclude classes of employees from bargaining by using notices of representational rights to limit coverage.
An investigation commissioned by CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor has cleared NSW construction and general division branch officials of going soft on building companies associated with Sydney business identity George Alex and of bullying two organisers who raised the allegations.
