Two companies that claimed they acted on legal advice from the Australian Industry Group have been fined almost $25,000 for refusing to allow a CFMEU official entry to a building site.
The Federal Court has tossed out a challenge to an FWC full bench decision, describing confidence in the administration of justice as a "significant factor" in finding Energy Australia's case an abuse of process.
The Federal court system faces an unprecedented half-day strike by support staff this afternoon over stalled pay negotiations which have left them without a rise for four years.
A senior FWC member has floated the idea of the Commission playing a greater role in adverse action cases so they can be finalised faster than under the current regime, which he says can take four years.
The Federal Court has imposed record fines totalling more than $2.4 million against the CFMEU national and NSW branches and nine officials over breaches at Barangaroo in 2014, but says that without "legislative action" even higher penalties currently available under the law might not deter the militant union.
A CFMEU-backed class action brought against an employer for allegedly underpaying 150 workers more than $1 million for travel time stands to recast agreement wording on the precise location where a job begins and ends.
In the first test of whether Queensland's laws regulating peaceful assemblies can be used to block pickets and protests during industrial disputes, the state's Supreme Court has rejected mining company Glencore's argument that such activities can't be authorised.
A court has found a husband and wife who performed largely home-based clerical work exclusively for one business before their services were further outsourced were employees rather than contractors because the company had an "undoubted authority to control" the relationship.
A cleaner who invoiced as both a sole trader and a company but claims he was an employee is pursuing Woolworths and three contracting businesses for more than $300,000 in underpaid wages and unpaid overtime, annual leave and superannuation he says he should have been paid between 2004 and 2015.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has agreed to enter into mediation with an employee who accuses it of taking adverse action by suspending and demoting her and directing her to take indefinite leave following a long absence for cancer treatment and surgery.
