Federal Labor's good faith bargaining laws have the potential to help deliver a more sophisticated, less confrontational approach to collective bargaining in Australia, but guidance is lacking on how they are meant to operate, according to a leading IR academic.
A Fair Work Australia full bench has rejected an employers' "technical and pedantic" challenge to an AMWU protected action ballot, saying that in most cases the drafting of ballot questions will be a matter for the party seeking them.
The CFMEU's WA branch could come under intense scrutiny in coming months, with Woodside launching legal action against the union over its alleged role in the ongoing strike at the Pluto LNG project, the ABCC investigating the dispute and the FWO looking into potentially unlawful conduct in WA's North-West.
A beauty therapy salon unlawfully discriminated against a pregnant worker when it made her redundant after unilaterally changing her employment status from full-time to part-time, a tribunal has found.
Workers at a third major offshore oil and gas vessel operator have voted to take protected strike action, while the MUA has deferred a planned 48-hour strike at Total Marine Services in the hope of reaching agreement with the employer tomorrow.
In an important ruling, FWA has ruled that an Xstrata subsidiary's dismissal of 10 mineworkers wasn't a genuine redundancy, because it still required their jobs to be performed.
WA Premier Colin Barnett has joined employer groups in urging as many as 1500 construction workers on Woodside's Pluto LNG project to end their strike over accommodation arrangements in the remote region and return to work.
In what is understood to be a first for a federal public service agreement, FWO employees on maternity leave will continue to receive superannuation contributions during any unpaid part of their break.
A Melbourne-based technology company has won injunctions against two former senior employees to prevent them using confidential product information to help launch their own business, but the Federal Court has rejected its bid for damages to compensate it for lost business opportunities.
