The WA IRC set up its inquiry into the CFMEU's state election to clear up who is entitled to run and vote, but evidence heard yesterday has raised questions about how the union might operate after the poll is over.
A full bench of the Federal Court has overturned an early ruling in which the CFMEU (FFTS division) successfully relied on a rarely used unlawful termination provision to win reinstatement for an employee on the basis that he was sacked after he complained to it about his treatment at work.
It has been a long-time coming, but Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard has today revealed that all current members of the AIRC will be offered roles with Fair Work Australia.
Australia’s response to climate change is an opportunity to create more than half a million new “green jobs” in six emerging industries over the next 20 years, but it will require the federal government to mandate deep, early carbon emissions reductions and help the industries develop domestic and international markets, according to a report jointly commissioned by the ACTU and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
CFMEU WA secretary Kevin Reynolds today endured the first hours of what is likely to be a two-day grilling on the union's affairs, in a day of hearings in which tempers flared amid accusations of obfuscation and inappropriate behaviour.
Substantial rise in workers struggling with finances; Court fines Qantas $5,000, says agreement breach "understandable"; $30,000 fine for Donut King franchisee who deliberately underpaid disempowered employees; Fixed pay for chief executives growing three times faster than average earnings; Slow progress undone as number of executive women declines; Leading IR academic Keith Ewing to hold Australian seminars.
CFMEU WA branch secretary Kevin Reynolds today won a temporary reprieve from giving evidence in the State IRC inquiry into the union, but tomorrow now looms as D-Day after his lawyers failed in their bid for a longer adjournment.
The United Services Union will push the Federal Government to legislate to guarantee NSW local government workers will remain in the state IR system, after the Rees Government introduced legislation to de-corporatise councils and put them out of reach of Work Choices.
The Federal Magistrates Court has ordered the CFMEU (construction division) to pay penalties totalling $49,550 and a delegate $12,000 for breaching freedom of association laws over a bid to convince a contractor and a labour-hire worker to join the union; while a South Australian CFMEU official has been fined $1,300 and faces having his entry permit revoked for delaying a concrete pour.
CFMEU construction and general division WA branch secretary Kevin Reynolds has denied any involvement in events that led to hundreds of members being declared unfinancial in the lead-up to the union's election, in documents tendered in a State IRC hearing today.
