CSBP Ltd has succeeded in terminating a bargaining period to prevent a strike ballot by 150 LHMU process technicians at its Kwinana chemical plant in WA, after the AIRC found the union failed to genuinely seek agreement with the company.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has introduced into Parliament his flagged changes to subclass 457 visas that impose sanctions and penalties on employers who don't comply with their obligations under the scheme.
An IR consultant who has lodged more than 20,000 AWAs with the OEA says the Howard Government's fairness test marks the death knell for serious labour market reform for small business, which will now find the individual contracts "too hard and expensive".
The assistant secretary of the WA branch of the CFMEU (construction division), Joe McDonald, is today facing expulsion from the ALP, after Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd last night called an executive meeting to commence the process.
In the latest development in the Tristar redundancy battle, a full bench of the AIRC has rejected a union challenge to an earlier decision to terminate the agreement covering the Marrickville, NSW, plant.
A Hobart hotel applied unlawful duress in a bid to force a casual waitress to sign an AWA, the Federal Magistrates Court has found, after hearing that its manager threatened to turn it into a low-benefit "concentration camp" for workers who insisted on staying on the award.
A new report has exposed employees' loss of entitlement under employer greenfields agreements. At the same time, its release has brought to light another major loophole in the Federal Government's new fairness test.
A day after the passage of the legislation establishing the fairness test, the Howard Government has announced the new heads of the re-badged workplace regulatory agencies, with Comcare chief executive Barbara Bennett the surprise appointment as director of the Workplace Authority (formerly the OEA), while its current chief, Peter McIlwain, will be deputy director.
The ALP will come under renewed pressure to retain the ABCC beyond 2010, after a WA court this afternoon released the building watchdog's video featuring CFMEU WA branch assistant secretary Joe McDonald.
