Esso Australia has won an appeal that will prevent the Fair Work Commission from making a workplace determination to settle a four-year bargaining dispute at the company's Bass Strait oil and gas operations.
In a case in which classroom allergy management has intersected with IR laws, the FWC has reinstated an infants teacher summarily dismissed for allegedly breaching her duty of care when she gave an "unsafe" chocolate to a pupil, after checking its ingredients.
The FWO has launched a challenge to last month's Federal Court order for the MUA to pay a $38,000 fine for a single contravention of the prohibition on unlawful strikes, when the watchdog was seeking $3.6 million for what it says was more than 500 breaches during industrial action against stevedore Hutchison Ports.
Global resources giant Rio Tinto, after its recent rapprochement with unions, is "the largest and most comprehensive example" of why it makes sense to bargain with employees' representatives, according to mining union leader Tony Maher.
The ripples from a recent decision upsetting the authority on outer limits contract workers pursuing unfair dismissal claims have reached another jurisdiction, with the WA IR Commission ordering the reinstatement of a septuagenarian school traffic warden who had been "taken advantage" of by the employer.
The FWO has failed in its bid to hold the former director of a national grower's association accessorially liable for a labour hire company's admitted underpayment of pickers working on his farm, with the Federal Court finding it could not prove he knew about the contracts involved.
Unions are likely next week to again back a plan to campaign for women workers to receive an extra 2% in superannuation contributions and to return the retirement age to 65.
In a significant decision on out-of-hours conduct, the FWC has ruled that ALDI justifiably dismissed a storeperson for throwing a full beer glass over the heads of colleagues at an official company Christmas party.
The ACTU will urge affiliated unions to consider backdating membership for young workers who want to join a union to have a problem resolved, along with providing free or reduced membership fees.
