The MUA is challenging three recent FWC approvals of agreements that had been negotiated directly between large offshore services companies and small numbers of employees, including one in which a Commission member expressed "serious concerns about the authenticity of the bargaining process".
The SDA says it will push harder to ensure that agreements contain sufficient safeguards to pass the better off overall test, in the wake of an FWC full bench's embarrassing rejection of the enterprise deal it negotiated for Coles supermarkets.
BHP Coal satisfied consultation obligations in its enterprise agreement after announcing it would shed hundreds of jobs across four central Queensland coal mines in 2014, even though it had already reached a decision to offer voluntary redundancies, the Federal Court has found.
The takeover of the Patrick's stevedoring business by a company chaired by waterfront warrior Chris Corrigan has helped to break a long–running bargaining deadlock with the MUA.
Workers at the Arrium steelworks in South Australia have narrowly rejected a proposed enterprise agreement containing a 10% pay cut that has been proposed by the company's administrator, but the ballot might be re-run in coming weeks.
Employers calculating redundancy payments will have to count periods of regular and systematic casual employment before workers became permanent, after a Fair Work Commission majority ruling that a dissenting member warns could retrospectively bestow other entitlements such as annual leave.
A big marine service provider has had a win against the MUA in the deadlocked bargaining round covering offshore oil and gas service vessels, which began in December 2012.
The FWC has found an unqualified engineer earning in excess of the high income threshold can pursue her unfair dismissal claim because she was covered under the relevant mining award.
