DEEWR officials last night rejected Opposition criticism of the federal government's intervention in the Barclay High Court case, saying it was in the public interest and based on legal advice.
A FWA full bench has accepted the lawfulness of clauses in an enterprise agreement covering trainees working in the coal mining industry that the CFMEU sought to strike down on the grounds that it would adversely affect their entitlements, including those under state legislation.
The Federal Court has reinstated a union delegate to his job pending his adverse action hearing, but only on the unusual basis that he complies with a workplace behaviour protocol and works in a different plant.
FWA President, Justice Iain Ross, has today told Shadow Workplace Relations Minister Senator Eric Abetz that counselling commissioners about their decisions is dangerous, and that the competence of tribunal members is a matter for Parliament.
In what is set to become the first settlement in the current higher education bargaining round, the NTEU says it has reached an in-principle deal with WA's Curtin University to deliver academic and general staff a 4% per annum pay increase and conversion of casual and fixed-term employment into new ongoing positions.
An appeal court has reinstated a coal mineworker who failed a medical assessment after a doctor deemed he was permanently unfit for work due to a "significant and foreseeable risk of sudden incapacity", based solely on his statistical analysis of the worker's unhealthy BMI.
FWA's President, Justice Iain Ross, has renewed his call for "Fair Work" to be removed from its title, just a day after Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten announced it was likely to be rebadged as the Fair Work Commission.
The Federal Magistrates Court has upheld the right of employees to widen the scope of adverse action claims before the courts beyond what was in their initial Fair Work Australia application, after rejecting an employer's argument that this would render the tribunal's conciliation process "pointless".
The MUA has welcomed the Federal Government's review and planned legislative changes to improve protection for offshore resource industry workers in the wake of the Federal Court's Allseas judgment, but AMMA has warned that the Government should "proceed cautiously".
