Adding campaign material to company correspondence, answering customer inquiries with automated messages about bargaining, and placing slogans on company cars are all valid forms of industrial action, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.
The Productivity Commission in a new report has repeated its call for governments to adopt Victorian-style procurement guidelines to regulate substandard IR conduct in the construction industry, but has warned they might need to be modified to avoid a clash with the Fair Work Act.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected stevedore DP World's bid for orders at its troubled Fremantle terminal, holding that while "the attributes of a cooperative and productive workforce may have been missing in the past", there was no evidence industrial action was taking place or planned.
The FWBC has included CFMEU construction and general division national secretary Dave Noonan in its fourth prosecution over the $1.2 billion Perth Children's Hospital project.
The Fair Work Commission's decision to temporarily halt a planned 48-hour strike at Tidewater Marine took into account that an MUA official was unavailable to give evidence in person to the tribunal.
BHP Billiton has stepped up pressure over a bargaining deadlock involving tug boat crews in Port Hedland, warning it is “actively pursuing” legal options to prevent industrial action.
A senior IR lawyer has told the HR Nicholls Society the Fair Work Act should be amended to ban protected industrial action that has serious consequences and to remove entirely the rights of high income earners to strike, in a presentation predicting the decline of the MUA's power and influence.
The FWBC has lodged new Federal Court action alleging coercion by the CFMEU's WA construction branch and officials at the $1.2 billion New Children's Hospital project in Perth last year, its third prosecution relating to the site.
The Federal Court has ordered the CFMEU to stop blocking access to a major Sydney apartment project, pending the full hearing of the developer's claim that the union has breached secondary boycott laws.
