Unions page 133 of 197

The CPSU is ramping-up its campaign to break a bargaining deadlock at the Department of Human Services, with rolling stoppages set to start next week, but the department anticipates the effect of the union's action will be "minimal".

The timetable for having the Registered Organisations Commission up and running appears to have slipped, with a new target adopted for it to be in place by the end of June.

The FWC has issued a new entry permit to a CFMEU official despite his "serious lack of diligence" in misplacing his old one, while it has granted a fresh permit to another of the union's officials – a former acting national secretary of the FSU - after finding it need not "rigidly apply" a general rule that applicants have completed entry training within the previous three months.

The first combined conference of the MUA and the CFMEU appears to have given fresh momentum to the planned merger between the two militant unions, while a new Left-Right union alliance has emerged within the WA branch of the ALP.

Victoria's police federation has lost a battle to secure overtime for officers working at the 2014 G20 leaders' summit in Brisbane after the FWC concluded they were not working in the six hours between checking out of their hotel and a bus arriving to take them to their homebound flights.

Unions say they are closely watching former Greens leader Bob Brown's High Court challenge to Tasmania's anti-protest laws, which has seen the federal and four state governments – three of them Labor – lining up to defend the legislation.

The TWU will oppose the approval of what it alleges is a substandard ground-handling agreement put forward by a company within the Emirates airlines group that offers workers 60 hours' work per month with no weekly guarantee.

A tribunal has awarded an actor and MEAA member $1,000 compensation for discrimination by a cinema that refused to sell her a movie ticket because she belonged to the union.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has imposed the first-ever sanction under the national construction code against a builder, temporarily prohibiting J Hutchinson Pty Ltd from securing federal contracts, while the CFMEU has hardened its position against re-opening deals to make them compliant with the latest changes to the 2016 code.

A full Federal Court majority has found that the court cannot treat a "lawful request" or a party's motivation for taking coercive industrial action as a mitigating factor when assessing penalties and has ordered a twelve-fold increase in fines against the CFMEU for organising a blockade at Perth International Airport in 2013.