Industrial action/disputes page 39 of 81

The AWU is urging more than 1200 striking Alcoa workers to reject a revised management deal as the action affecting the company's West Australian operations enters its fourth week.

The FWC has ordered Broadspectrum's WA court security and transport officers to suspend protected action, finding that banning overtime and ditching uniforms posed a risk to the public, court and hospital staff and the prisoners themselves.

The Victorian government plans to intervene for a second time in a lengthy bargaining dispute over a new enterprise agreement covering Esso's offshore oil and gas workers in Bass Strait.

The AMWU says a decision by the RBA's money printing arm, Note Printing Australia, to lock out workers in response to a planned one-hour stopwork leaves members free to employ an element of surprise in future actions in support of a new deal.

Worker blew last chance "in spectacular fashion"; Alcoa mine and refinery workers down tools; Foreign pilots visa designed to drive down salaries: Union; Emergency services commissioner resigns over bullying.

BlueScope is seeking to bolster a proposed three-year agreement at its Port Kembla steel operations with a guaranteed $4000 pre-payment from a new profit share scheme.

The union leading the campaign against prospective job losses at a major brewery is at risk of being sidelined after the FWC found it "reached the line between [unacceptably careless disregard] and. . . deliberate non-compliance" in failing to communicate restraining notices to members.

The ACTU's triennial Congress has endorsed a proposal for state and federal governments to enact industrial manslaughter laws, after maritime union leader Chris Cain told delegates that employers who recklessly kill workers should face $20 million fines and 20 years behind bars.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus has today mounted a spirited defence of solidarity among union members, saying that calling a strikebreaker a "scab" is "an accurate description", while the peak body's new president said she experienced the power of unions when as 14-year-old waitress, members helped her fight back against sexual harassment by a supervisor.

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.