Industrial action page 41 of 42

A company granted a broad Victorian Supreme Court order to curb a picket line at its warehouse remains at loggerheads with the NUW over its push for a new enterprise agreement.

The FWBC's application for an interlocutory injunction to stop the CFMEU taking industrial action at the $400 million Bald Hills Wind Farm project in South Gippsland was headed off yesterday when the union gave an undertaking to the Federal Court not to disrupt work on the site.

The CFMEU construction and general division's Victorian branch is facing a bill of more than $2 million after the Victorian Supreme Court today convicted it of five criminal contempts for flouting orders not to hinder access to two Grocon sites, including the Myer Emporium project in Melbourne's CBD that was the subject of a huge blockade in August 2012.

The Fair Work Commission has held that the "genuinely trying" test is not a "moral" code and has granted the MUA protected ballot orders despite accepting that an employer was "rightly aggrieved" by its bargaining conduct.

The Federal Court has ruled that two related door manufacturers who provided gift vouchers to non-striking workers did not take adverse action against workers who took protected industrial action in support of a new agreement.

The Federal Court has issued a sweeping injunction to stop CFMEU construction and general division WA branch assistant secretary Joe McDonald from entering Brookfield Multiplex construction sites for nearly three years and ordered the union to pay the company $500,000 in compensation for strikes he incited at two major projects last year.

The MUA has been forced to call off protected industrial action in the offshore sector that was due to start today against Tidewater Marine, after the company secured a Federal Court injunction.

The Federal Court has ordered the CFMEU (construction and general division) and WA branch assistant secretary Joe McDonald to pay a total of $193,600 for their part in an unlawful stopwork at a Pilbara site.

Fair Work Building and Construction chief executive Leigh Johns has challenged those who say the inspectorate should have intervened in the Grocon Supreme Court proceedings to identify the powers it could have relied upon, while the main players are about to head back for more talks with FWA President, Justice Iain Ross.

The ACTU has called on the panel reviewing the Fair Work Act to discard submissions from peak employer bodies, on the basis that they have failed to address the terms of reference and are seeking to reinstate features of Work Choices. Meanwhile, BHP Billiton has urged the panel to throw out union proposals to specifically allow entry to lunchrooms and to recognise the legitimacy of pattern bargaining.