A court has fined the CFMEU and two organisers almost $100,000, after finding the union engaged in unlawful coercion and adverse action when it organised a blockade at the $1.6 billion Port of Melbourne expansion project because an employer refused to bargain.
Former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello says there is bipartisan support in Australian politics to maintain the "Rudd/Gillard wage fixing apparatus", but that economic pressures will force politicians to act in coming years.
Mining giant Thiess has had a proposed enterprise agreement knocked back because it was not genuinely agreed, with the FWC finding the company chose the three employees who participated in the ballot to "manipulate" the result.
Queensland employers are urging the State and Federal governments to take responsibility for millions of dollars in backpay claims that could be pursued by apprentices after an FWC full bench held that an old State award that continued to dictate their pay was superseded three years ago.
Some 10% of unpaid work experience appears to be unlawful, with more than half a million Australians falling victim to it in the past five years, according to new university analysis presented at an IR academics conference in Canberra today.
Employers will no longer have a mandatory role as "paymasters" in the national paid parental leave scheme, while the maximum government payment will increase to 20 weeks, under legislation introduced into Federal Parliament today.
The FWC has issued former Tasmanian union peak body leader Kevin Harkins an entry permit, despite his "serious" past contraventions, after finding it is not the Commission's role to punish individuals for past wrongdoing.
The Turnbull Government has won support for an earlier start for the tougher national construction code, after a dramatic about-face by crossbench Senator Derryn Hinch.
Onshore workers for Esso's Bass Strait oil and gas operations have voted up a second replacement enterprise agreement, leaving only the terms of the third deal, for offshore, to be arbitrated by the FWC.
