Fair Work Australia has rejected an employer's argument that it should refuse to grant protected action ballots to two unions because they had failed to adequately justify their "very expensive" wage claim.
The NSW Government, in its submission to the ABCC's sham contracting inquiry, says the Fair Work Act's sham contracting provisions make it too difficult for employees to mount successful prosecutions, while Odco independent contracting system pioneer Peter Bosa has dismissed the idea of creating a new class of "dependent contractors" as "an exercise in heuristic oxymoronic hyperbole".
In an important Independent Contracts Act ruling, the Federal Court has found that a restraint clause in a contract between a labour hire company and Woolworths rendered unfair a separate contract between the labour hire company and an IT worker it placed with the retailer.
A textiles employer has failed to stymie a union's strike ballot application on the grounds that it had pursued it prematurely and adopted a pattern of negotiation different to that it had followed at other sites.
Unions fined $110,000 over swipe-card dispute; Strikes loom at Toll; CSIRO workers vote up strike ballot; Full bench upholds employer's view on weekend penalties.
A Fair Work Australia full bench has emphasised the critical importance in dismissal matters of a "valid reason" finding, in quashing a Commissioner's ruling that an employee was unfairly sacked despite breaching safety rules.
Controversial CFMEU (construction and general division) WA branch secretary Kevin Reynolds has announced he will soon retire after a 40 year career in the union movement.
An error by his lawyer was not enough to get an employee's late adverse action claim over the line, with Fair Work Australia taking other factors - including the worker's own lack of activity - into account to reject it.
Qantas's common law damages claim against the TWU over a wildcat strike by baggage handlers in 2009 has resumed in the Federal Court after settlement talks a fortnight ago failed.
