Institutions, tribunals, courts page 248 of 356

The Turnbull Government has intervened to take a test case on a public servant's private use of Twitter direct to the High Court.

The Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union has slammed the Productivity Commission's omission of women in its draft report on the efficiency of the superannuation system, insisting it had "plenty of scope" to address a gender gap in which women retire with about half the savings of men.

The Federal Court has upheld Qantas' right to refuse access to documents sought over a "leave burn" program for aircraft engineers, in a decision a union leader says raises the bar for entering workplaces to prove breaches.

In a significant decision affecting those in temporary government roles, the FWC has found a Federal department failed to recognise it was dismissing a "non-ongoing" employee when it informed him that repeated instances of disrespectful behaviour meant he would not be offered further work.

The FWC has given short shrift to union applications for a protected action ballot at Kimberly-Clark Australia, finding a cancelled meeting and a week's delay in securing a new date cannot be construed as being obstructive.

As union calls for the ROC's abolition have intensified in the wake of its raids on AWU offices, the watchdog's leadership maintains that behind the scenes there is increasing collaboration over a shared quest to protect members' interests.

Phoenixing short-changing workers hundreds of millions: Report; Parker gets feet under desk at FWO; ROC goes after NUW branch; ALERA conference tackles future of bargaining, wage setting.

The FWO has launched a challenge to last month's Federal Court order for the MUA to pay a $38,000 fine for a single contravention of the prohibition on unlawful strikes, when the watchdog was seeking $3.6 million for what it says was more than 500 breaches during industrial action against stevedore Hutchison Ports.

The ripples from a recent decision upsetting the authority on outer limits contract workers pursuing unfair dismissal claims have reached another jurisdiction, with the WA IR Commission ordering the reinstatement of a septuagenarian school traffic warden who had been "taken advantage" of by the employer.

In a significant decision on out-of-hours conduct, the FWC has ruled that ALDI justifiably dismissed a storeperson for throwing a full beer glass over the heads of colleagues at an official company Christmas party.