Today's High Court ruling doesn't set a precedent for suppression of workplace protests outside of the specific circumstances of Tasmanian forestry operations, according to Adelaide University Professor of Law Andrew Stewart.
The majority of a full High Court has today found that parts of Tasmania's laws against workplace protests in forestry and related areas are invalid because they offend the Constitution's implied freedom of political communication.
In a landmark judgment upholding a casual employee's right to convert to permanency on a "like for like" basis, the Federal Court has concluded it should fine Toll more than $40,000 and order it to compensate a freight handler for refusing to grant his request for full-time employment from May last year.
A company that allegedly told a 62-year old salesperson that he was too old, too deaf and was "hobbling around" with a "broken back" he would use to make a workers compensation claim has been ordered to pay $15,000 for "pain, suffering and humiliation" as part of a larger damages payout for age and disability discrimination.
The Turnbull Government has failed to secure passage of amendments to competition laws to raise penalties for secondary boycotts from $750,000 to $10 million.
The FWC has found it has no basis to suspend industrial action by CEPU members at the Australian Submarine Corporation, because a campaign of 162 half-hour stopworks is yet to begin, but has warned it would be likely to issue orders to provide for an agreement ballot in a strike-free environment if circumstances change.
Australia's largest local government authority has been forced to temporarily abandon putting its proposed enterprise agreement to an employee ballot, after the Queensland IRC accepted that blue-collar unions who oppose the deal had established a serious case to be tried that the employer was breaching the State's IR legislation.
The region that at the height of the resources boom employed one in 200 Australian workers but accounted for a massive 20% of the nation's export income is critical to understanding Australian IR, Sydney University academic Bradon Ellem told a recent conference.
An FWC full bench has granted permission to appeal the sacking by resources giant FMG of an employee just one week into a six-week performance improvement plan (PIP), but has cautioned against interpreting its ruling as suggesting that employers must always see such processes through to the end.
