In a signal to employers that they must have systems in place to ensure they promptly provide information the FWC requires to launch a protected action ballot, the Federal Court has imposed a substantial fine on waste giant Cleanaway for a short delay in the "time-critical" process, while warning that in more egregious cases larger penalties would be warranted.
A construction company has failed in its bid to stop potential strikes amid claims of union interference in the protected action ballot process, the FWC pointing out that it cannot make orders preventing industrial action yet to be endorsed or notified.
A judge has warned the FWO of a possible "perception" it failed to comply with its model litigant obligations after dropping the "most serious" claim of threatening behaviour from a CFMEU right of entry case as part of a liability deal.
The FWC has urged the Defence Department to send "an authorised and properly instructed representative" to deadlocked bargaining negotiations at the Australian Submarine Corporation.
An employer is opposing a CFMEU request to have the FWC hold a joint post-PABO compulsory conciliation conference relating to two separate deals for its workers on the Cross River Rail project in South-East Queensland.
An employer supplying well workers for offshore gas operations in the Bass Strait was entitled to stand down most of them when Esso suspended their services during industrial action, but the FWC has made a preliminary finding that a small yet "significant" portion might have been unauthorised.
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to limit the amount of confidential employee information it must give an independent agent ahead of a protected action ballot, while it has also refused to amend the proposed PABO to include a safety commitment.
An "ineluctable finding" that the AFAP could not persuade pilot members at a Qantas subsidiary to vote up a new deal supported by the union has helped convince the FWC that it should make an intractable bargaining declaration sought by the airline.
In a significant decision acknowledged as potentially being viewed as "undemocratic", a FWC full bench majority has found it has the power to make a workplace determination on contested bargaining matters after a deal has already been approved by the Commission.
Qantas subsidiary Network Aviation looks likely to win an intractable bargaining declaration, after unions' last-minute decision not to oppose it, ahead of a hearing today.
