Hundreds of construction workers today protested at a site in Melbourne over an alleged assault on two CFMMEU officials that has attracted the interest of the ABCC.
A Brisbane company has become Australia's first entity to be convicted of industrial manslaughter, while its directors were handed a suspended jail term for their role in a worker's death.
A CFMMEU official who had already clocked almost $40,000 in penalties for entry breaches has today landed a $10,000 personal payment order for entering a site to exercise an OHS right, just a month after surrendering his permit.
A court has penalised an early learning centre that refused on the basis of an alleged threat to its workers' "health and wellbeing" to allow a union organiser use its staff room to hold discussions, directing her instead to a storage room.
An FWC full bench has rejected MUA Sydney branch secretary Paul McAleer's appeal against being denied an entry permit, finding a tribunal member held no obligation to signal that the official might have his rights withdrawn after 12 years due to a history of industrial law breaches.
A judge has today accepted the ABCC's view that the construction union's lengthy rap sheet should influence the penalty for a relatively minor breach, but has declined to impose a personal payment order on the official involved.
The FWC has taken the rare step of revoking the entry permit of a CFMMEU official who aggressively swore at a subcontractor at a road construction site before asking if he was going to use the hammer he was carrying "to smash me".
In a significant ruling on how Fair Work Act breaches are to be assessed, a Federal Court full bench has invoked double jeopardy principles to strip $48,000 off penalties awarded against the CFMMEU and one of its organisers.
The Federal Court has closed a loophole under which union organisers maintained they could enter sites to discuss safety issues under state OHS laws without showing their federal entry permits.
Ahead of Federal Court hearings into ABCC claims that two CFMMEU officials breached entry laws at a Melbourne freeway project in 2017, the union is suing the head contractor and its IR manager for obstructing their efforts to investigate suspected safety breaches.