The ETU says a $40,000 penalty against an employer for failing to consult before engaging labour hire workers on inferior pay and conditions sends a message that pre-Building Code job security clauses in agreements are still enforceable.
An FWC full bench majority has refused to let the SDA amend appeals of two Aldi agreements to challenge the retailer's use of the word "leader" instead of "employer" in notices of representative rights, holding that the union must wait until the outcome of a judicial review on the same issue.
Qube Ports must withdraw final warnings issued to seven Port Kembla workers who refused shift extensions, after the FWC took its bargaining team by "complete surprise" and found the employer misconstrued a common abbreviation in its agreement.
The FWC has found a nursing home's agreement allows it to make carers responsible for insulin injections when nurses are unavailable, despite "misplaced" fears, protestations and lack of extra pay, but only if the employer improves training practices.
The FWC has tossed out a new deal put forward by a "sophisticated industrial player" after finding it failed to spell out to four long-term workers the numerous terms that fell short of the industry award.
Despite affecting less than 1% of its workforce, the operator of Melbourne's Yarra Trams network has been told by the FWC to hold off on further changes to its supply chain area in order to comply with an agreement's consultation obligations concerning "significant effects".
The FWC has recommended that an employer release an AWU delegate an hour early to catch a flight to the union's annual women's conference, finding it not unreasonable under the terms of its agreement to refuse her a full day off during sugarcane crushing season.
As the SDA prepares to take a proposed deal to Woolworths workers, its rival union is backing a store supervisor's application to terminate the retailer's 2012 national agreement and claw back $1 billion in alleged underpayments.
Employers are warning of "massive liability" and instability for all who engage casuals and unions say it could be harder to use labour hire to "drive down costs", after a full Federal Court upheld a finding that a labour hire casual was in fact an employee entitled to annual leave payments.
