In a surprise twist, CFMEU mining and energy division members at Xstrata's Newlands coal mine in Queensland have used the controversial "opt-out" clause in the mine's agreement to seek to access the superior pay and bonuses the company offers as an incentive to move onto individual contracts.
The AMWU has today launched an adverse action case against Toyota Motor Corporation Australia, claiming it unfairly selected 12 delegates and OHS representatives for redundancy at its Altona assembly plant in Melbourne last week.
The NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal has approved a HR training program it ordered a company to implement, after finding last year that a team leader had victimised a general hand.
An architectural firm has failed to overturn an order to pay $50,000 compensation to an employee it sacked for "disloyalty" after he helped a colleague with her unfair dismissal claim, and has also been unsuccessful in seeking to reduce the payout because he made no written applications for jobs to mitigate his post-termination losses.
The Federal Court has ordered Vivienne Dye to pay almost $6m in indemnity costs to Commonwealth Securities for sexual harassment proceedings she brought that were "based on falsehood" and had no legal substance.
In what has been described as one of the worst cases of deliberate underpayment of entitlements to employees, Federal Court Judge Robert Buchanan has ordered that an abattoir and its owner pay just shy of the maximum allowable penalty for each of the three major areas in which they breached IR laws.
AMMA has asked Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten to change the Fair Work Act to prevent unions seeking to take industrial action before bargaining commences.
A former Tasmanian police officer who was reinstated after being unfairly dismissed for engaging in out of hours oral sex in a public place has been awarded $125,000 in damages after a successful defamation action against the publishers, editor and journalists of News Limited's Hobart newspaper, The Mercury.
The Federal Court has today confirmed that unions that are facing an employer that refuses to bargain are not obliged to seek a majority support order or jump other hurdles before asking members to authorise industrial action.
