After clashing over workload protections for teachers and support workers in more than 500 NSW and ACT Catholic schools, the Independent Education Union is seeking to take industrial action and negotiate agreements directly with 11 dioceses rather than make the multi-enterprise agreement sought by the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations.
Workers at spice giant McCormick Foods are commencing rolling strikes today as a call for a consumer boycott of iconic products such as Aeroplane Jelly and Keen's Mustard gains traction on social media.
The Federal Court has found that while AMWU, CFMEU and AWU organisers did not "instruct", "advise" or "encourage" employees at a Victorian paper mill to walk off the job for three days, they and the unions were knowingly involved in the unlawful strikes.
The Turnbull Government's national construction code is seeking to break the "cartel-like behaviour" between head contractors and construction unions, according to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, but legal expert Andrew Stewart says building companies are facing "a complete mess".
The NTEU, which has flagged that it will "substantially revise" its wage claim at Murdoch University, is accusing the institution of walking away from talks in the Fair Work Commission that might in any case be a "mere contrivance" on the way to it pursuing termination of its agreement.
A court has fined the CFMEU and two organisers almost $100,000, after finding the union engaged in unlawful coercion and adverse action when it organised a blockade at the $1.6 billion Port of Melbourne expansion project because an employer refused to bargain.
Mining giant Thiess has had a proposed enterprise agreement knocked back because it was not genuinely agreed, with the FWC finding the company chose the three employees who participated in the ballot to "manipulate" the result.
Rio Tinto has agreed to sell its NSW coal interests – including the Coal & Allied operations that were at the centre of the late 1990s battle of the IR "titans" – to Chinese interests for $3.2 billion ($US2.45 billion).
The tone around deadlocked negotiations over a new agreement at Parmalat's Echuca processing plant has shifted dramatically over the past 24 hours, both sides believing a resolution is near after agreeing to divide up and rework contentious clauses before reconvening early next week.
The FWC has chastised an employer for distributing a "partisan" majority support ballot notice that discourages employees from voting to start bargaining.