A Senate inquiry has urged Public Service Minister Michaelia Cash to intervene in the federal public sector bargaining dispute and soften the "intransigent" Coalition's "brutally hard-line" bargaining policy by relaxing the 2% wages cap and removing the prohibition on backpay, but Government senators have flatly rejected the recommendations.
The FWC has rejected a union application for a bargaining order, after finding that redundancies triggered by protected industrial action do not necessarily constitute a breach of good faith bargaining obligations.
The Federal Court has refused to suspend penalties against 50 workers who walked out to protest a colleague's sacking, fining each individual up to $1,500 for their unlawful industrial action at ExxonMobil's Longford gas conditioning plant last year.
Workers at strategic navy shipbuilder ASC Pty Ltd have endorsed taking legally-protected industrial action in coming weeks, with the aim of winning exemption from the Turnbull Government's broader bargaining policy.
The Fair Work Commission has issued a three week stop order preventing workers at a South Australian logistics provider from engaging in unlawful industrial action in support of a worker it allegedly sacked for taking too much time off work after a cancer diagnosis.
Together Queensland has failed to bring forward the closing dates of protected action ballots at hospitals across the state after the State IRC found it failed to make a convincing case for a shorter timeframe.
The FWC will next week move towards making a workplace determination for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection after employees this week voted overwhelmingly to reject the department's third bargaining offer.
More than 50 construction workers are facing penalties after the Federal Court found they took unlawful strike action when they attended a CFMEU rally at a Perth children's hospital construction site in 2013, but the union says the case is a complete "farce".
The CFMEU construction and general division's Victorian branch spent $13.1 million on legal costs in the 12 months to the end of last year, up more than five-fold from $2.3 million in 2014.
The Fair Work Act is "effectively useless" to counter picketing, according to a leading employer-clientele barrister who laments that police often turn "a blind eye" to what would normally be considered criminal conduct, while the High Court's chief justice has canvassed the utility of comparative law in the workplace legal arena.