A full shutdown of BlueScope Steel's operation in Port Kembla would double the local unemployment rate to above 15% and deliver a $3.3 billion economic hit, according to a study commissioned by the AWU.
Leighton has failed to knock out most of a manager's adverse action claim that alleges the construction giant made him redundant for complaining it failed to disclose a project's $205 million budget blowout and overstated its revenue by $1.4 billion.
The AMWU has responded to the continued loss of Australian manufacturing jobs and falling union membership by making 11 officials redundant in Victoria and NSW over recent months.
An FWC full bench will tomorrow hear an MUA challenge to the s418 order issued this week to halt an oil tanker crew’s protests against shipping company Teekay Shipping (Australia) replacing them with foreign workers.
The Federal Circuit Court has found a newspaper publisher took adverse action when it forced a full-time journalist to sign a take-it-or-leave it statement reducing him to two days a week - with unspecified entitlements to be paid in instalments - and sacked him when he complained.
BlueScope Steel has denied having made the decision to shut its Port Kembla steelworks, but has confirmed it is seeking major cost reductions through current enterprise bargaining negotiations.
Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James told a parliamentary committee today that her organisation is offering its workforce a pay rise of 1.25% over the next 12 months and 1% for each of the next two years, plus a 0.25% "unscheduled absence bonus" in the first year if sick leave can be reduced.
A "tit-for-tat" culture of poor communication and disrespect between management and the AMWU printing division has been turned around at Orora Fibre Packaging, which has increased its profitability since participating in a "collaborative transformation process" supported by the Fair Work Commission.
GM Holden is encouraging workers at its Elizabeth assembly plant in Adelaide to register their interest in taking an uncapped redundancy payout of 3.5 weeks pay for each year of service as it seeks to cut up to 270 jobs by the end of next month.
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.
