The ACTU and Minerals Council have won permission to intervene in what a FWC full bench describes as a "significant test" of Labor's multi-employer bargaining laws.
The IEU is envisioning that a landmark supported bargaining deal for early childhood workers will secure a "substantial" pay rise and conditions improvements that will be extended nationally, after unions and employers met with Federal Government representatives on Friday.
RAFFWU will challenge the rejection of a PABO bid targeting Coles supermarkets and Liquorland outlets after the FWC found it failed to genuinely bargain on behalf of salaried managers it wants to include in a multi-employer deal.
A major mining company has voiced "serious concerns" at being targeted by a multi-employer bargaining test case involving several competitors, despite the Albanese Government's assurances that mine employers would not be significantly affected by the legislation.
A lawyer for early childhood education employers involved in the sector's supported bargaining test case says that for future applications where participants are not as aligned, he suspects it will be a slow, challenging and "very cumbersome process", while a union leader in the case says the FWC is helping to bring the parties together.
The Australian Education Union told the FWC this afternoon that its revised application for a multi-employer bargaining authorisation for 12 TAFE institutes in Victoria might assuage employer concerns.
A FWC full bench has this afternoon issued the first supported bargaining authorisation under the Secure Jobs provisions, opening the way for the UWU, AEU and IEU to negotiate a deal on behalf of 12,000 employees with 64 early childhood education and care employers.
The Fair Work Act's continuing focus on single-enterprise bargaining, along with weak underpinning awards and supported bargaining's restriction to multi-employer rather than sector-wide bargaining, will limit the new stream's capacity to achieve "decent wages" for low-paid female employees, according to leading IR academics.
The IEU's WA branch has hit back at an employer group's submissions in its Catholic schools single interest multi-employer test case, warning against elevating the status of "irrelevant" views and declaring its construction of the legislation could create a "peculiar result".