The Federal Government has opposed the reinstatement of severance entitlements for small business employees and revealed further details of its substantive IR legislation in a submission to the AIRC in response to the first round of draft modern awards.
The NUW is urging its members to vote in favour of shifting three of its smaller state branches into the union's central branch, saying membership in Queensland and WA and SA is in decline and critical mass is needed to recruit and grow.
The Queensland, SA and WA branches of the NUW will on Wednesday seek to derail in the Federal Court a plan to bring them under the control of the union's national office.
The construction sector's key employer groups are divided over a proposal to subject the specialist construction division of Fair Work Australia to external oversight.
The acting chief justice of the Federal Court has accused the ABCC of bias in pursuing an unfounded coercion case against the plumbing union and its leader while ignoring the sham independent contracting operations and evasion of tax and certified agreement obligations engaged in by a "black economy" company run by a "foul-mouthed industrial cowboy".
An AIRC full bench has upheld a union application for a protected action ballot covering employees across several business units within a single company, in a decision that clarifies the rules governing multi-business agreements.
Former Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox QC has canvassed the possibility of ensuring greater supervision of the specialist construction division of Fair Work Australia if it retains its coercive powers and has emphasised it would be wrong to assume the new body would be "the ABCC rebadged", saying that "as the song says, 'it ain't necessarily so'".
Unions are preparing to escalate their campaign for a union agreement at Telstra and could take industrial action within a month if they win support from workers.
An AIRC full bench majority has upheld the reinstatement of a rail worker sacked over an angry outburst, after rejecting what it characterised as the "sterile" and "robotic" approach to arbitrating unfair dismissal cases urged by the employer.
AIRC to start consulting on next round of modern awards next month; Charles Darwin University staff reject non-union offer; Four in ten people say 18-week maternity pay proposal "about right"; and Lack of reassignment opportunity a genuine operational reason for sacking employee.
