The licenced aircraft engineers' union is urging the "liberalisation" of union coverage rules, saying that if they didn't exist at all, the industrial unrest that fuelled the bargaining battle between the union and Qantas might have been diminished before the airline dramatically shut down its operations and locked out its workforce in 2011.
An FWC full bench has emphasised that the tribunal should take a "global" rather than "line by line" approach when applying the better off overall test to agreements, while in another ruling the Commission has approved a deal with employer undertakings, despite union misgivings that it was originally voted up by only three employees who have since left the company.
BHP Billiton has nominated the Coalition's right of entry and greenfields amendments, stalled in the Senate, as its first priorities for IR change, telling the Productivity Commission it also wants restrictions on agreement content, faster relief from industrial action and a wound-back adverse action regime.
The Department of Employment has crunched the numbers on Australia's 122 modern awards, finding that just half provide for weekend penalty loadings, and 26 rule them out.
ASX top 100 company Asciano, which estimates that its subsidiary Patrick's last bruising bargaining round cost it $21 million, is calling for a greater role for the Fair Work Commission in "agreement facilitation".
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
There are "promising" early results from a 12-month pilot program that is seeking to speed-up the appeals process in the FWC and reduce parties' costs, according to the tribunal's president, Justice Iain Ross.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected a labour hire company's application to approve a deal without pay rates or restrictions on hours for its small, self-represented workforce, after granting the CFMEU permission to be heard as a "contradictor".
The former Labor Government's changes to the modern award objective have made it impossible for 24/7 industries such as hospitality to successfully prosecute cases to abolish penalty rates and should be scrapped, according to the peak body for restaurant employers.
Unions are seeking authorisation for industrial action at the massive Gorgon gas project, after workers employed by its largest contractor resoundingly voted down an agreement that would have provided an extra day off in each 35-day roster cycle.
