Legal page 554 of 569

A senior IR lawyer has told the HR Nicholls Society the Fair Work Act should be amended to ban protected industrial action that has serious consequences and to remove entirely the rights of high income earners to strike, in a presentation predicting the decline of the MUA's power and influence.

A finance broking house that issued a Brisbane-based employee five payslips in six years and employed him on a commission-based agreement that it believed did not entitle him to base salary, sick pay, annual leave and superannuation entitlements has been ordered to pay him almost $124,000 in penalties.

Labor and the Greens have combined in the Senate today to defeat the Abbott Government's legislation to establish a Registered Organisations Commission and align penalties for union and employer association officials with corporations law.

The FWBC has lodged new Federal Court action alleging coercion by the CFMEU's WA construction branch and officials at the $1.2 billion New Children's Hospital project in Perth last year, its third prosecution relating to the site.

The Federal Court has rejected mining giant Rio Tinto's bid to have a CFMEU adverse action claim struck out, holding the Fair Work Act does not authorise "discriminatory" payments.

The Federal Court has refused to reinstate a sales consultant pending the hearing of his wrongful dismissal claim, finding that his relationship with his former employer had broken down and that damages would be an adequate remedy if he ended up winning his case.

FWBC has launched Federal Court proceedings against CFMEU construction division national president David Hanna over an alleged breach of right of entry laws.

A court has found it seriously arguable that a contractual clause was reasonable in restraining a Fairfax executive from working for a competitor for six months, but refused to order him to comply because the publisher was slow to enforce it and because he had given undertakings not to poach clients or use his former employer's confidential information.

The Federal Court has ordered the CFMEU to stop blocking access to a major Sydney apartment project, pending the full hearing of the developer's claim that the union has breached secondary boycott laws.

The NSW Government has had a victory in its long-running battle to include compulsory superannuation increases within the public sector 2.5% wage cap, after the State's Court of Appeal quashed last year's IRC ruling that the wages cap only applied to Commission-awarded increases.