Unprotected/wildcat action page 18 of 19

The construction watchdog says it pursuing action against 25 building workers who owe penalties of $135,625 dating from unlawful industrial action on the North-West shelf gas project in 2008.

The need for employers to consider the individual circumstances of employees taking industrial action before they institute disciplinary action has been demonstrated in a FWC finding that a company unfairly dismissed a crane driver who belatedly joined an unlawful stop-work meeting.

The FWC has ordered the TWU to postpone member-endorsed industrial action against Linfox Armaguard because the vagueness of the notices to the company would have required it to respond with "extreme measures" such as organising flying squads to replace workers.

FWBC advisory board chair John Lloyd says he is "surprised" the ACCC does not have enough evidence to launch a prosecution against the CFMEU for taking secondary boycott action against concrete supplier Boral.

The Federal Court has added another $61,000 to the CFMEU's $250,000 bill for unprotected industrial action on the Brookfield Multiplex Perth hospital project last year, but in doing so has taken into account that the strike was in support of an injured worker and not for just a "self-interested purpose".

A company granted a broad Victorian Supreme Court order to curb a picket line at its warehouse remains at loggerheads with the NUW over its push for a new enterprise agreement.

The FWBC's application for an interlocutory injunction to stop the CFMEU taking industrial action at the $400 million Bald Hills Wind Farm project in South Gippsland was headed off yesterday when the union gave an undertaking to the Federal Court not to disrupt work on the site.

The CFMEU construction and general division's Victorian branch is facing a bill of more than $2 million after the Victorian Supreme Court today convicted it of five criminal contempts for flouting orders not to hinder access to two Grocon sites, including the Myer Emporium project in Melbourne's CBD that was the subject of a huge blockade in August 2012.

In a rare instance of a court imposing the maximum penalty under the Fair Work Act, the CFMEU mining and energy division has been fined $33,000 for unlawfully implementing its overtime policy at BHP Coal's Peak Downs mine.

The Federal Court has issued a sweeping injunction to stop CFMEU construction and general division WA branch assistant secretary Joe McDonald from entering Brookfield Multiplex construction sites for nearly three years and ordered the union to pay the company $500,000 in compensation for strikes he incited at two major projects last year.