Lengthy interlocutory orders against coercion and unlawful industrial action by the Queensland building unions on a state hospital project have fallen victim to the transition from the BCII laws to federal Labor's new construction industry IR regime and have been thrown out by the Federal Court.
The federal building industry watchdog has again defended the legal strategy it adopted during the recent Grocon dispute, saying that if it had sought injunctions against the CFMEU during the blockade it would have had to discontinue its investigations - which in the end had led to legal proceedings against the union.
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.
