The Federal Court has applied the "precautionary principle" in accepting the FWO's view on the process for calculating underpayments for 19,000 salaried Woolworths employees, while it has also indicated that jointly managing the matter with a similar Coles case "would be useful".
Victoria's wage inspectorate is prosecuting a company that makes digital learning programs for young children for 48 breaches of the State's child employment laws when it allegedly engaged 23 minors under 15 without obtaining mandatory permits.
Protected disclosures have prompted the ROC to probe whether a former AEU ACT branch leader improperly used his position, while it has also launched an investigation into the HSU Victorian No 1 branch's financial affairs that the union has derided as "politically motivated".
The ROC has wound up its three-year investigation of the AWU's historical $264,000 in donations that led to the infamous raid on the union's Melbourne and Sydney headquarters, finding the union breached registered organisations laws when it failed to authorise any of the 20 donations under the spotlight, but has decided against taking any further action against individuals or the union.
Woolworths has revealed another $144 million in underpayments to workers covered by its three main enterprise agreements, while warning its backpay bill for its earlier revelations about shortchanging salaried employees could still go higher.
The CFMMEU says that mine workers are "angry and dismayed" at a decision against laying charges over a 2020 explosion at a Queensland coal mine in which five labour hire workers sustained serious burns.
The ACCC's recent heightened focus on the building industry might be bearing fruit, after the Federal Court found this week that the CFMMEU induced and had knowing involvement in major construction company J Hutchinson's unlawful boycott of a non-union waterproofing subcontractor, the Federal Court has ruled.
The Federal Court has criticised the ABCC's "misrepresentation" of evidence in pleadings and a media release, concluding the watchdog bore some responsibility for a subsequent report in a national newspaper that wrongly stated that a CFMMEU organiser made a "throat-slitting" gesture to a truck driver.
The Federal Court has largely declined to take into account the CFMMEU's "recidivism" in setting a penalty against it for an organiser's unintended racial slur when he complained to a supervisor of southeast Asian background about the "third world" state of a Perth building site.
