Overlooked evidence and orders beyond the Commission's powers have led to two offshore oil and gas industry companies overturning FWC rulings that reduced the amount docked from workers' pay after they engaged in partial work bans.
The MUA has failed to convince a Federal Court judge that stevedores are owed for days lost through strikes because their agreement supposedly guaranteed 30 hours a week pay once they reached an annual threshold, whether they worked or not.
The FWC has found two types of proposed industrial action against an employer unlawful because they lack specificity, but has also labelled the company "disingenuous" for objecting to the original PABO, withdrawing its concerns and then re-ventilating them a month later.
In a signal to employers that they must have systems in place to ensure they promptly provide information the FWC requires to launch a protected action ballot, the Federal Court has imposed a substantial fine on waste giant Cleanaway for a short delay in the "time-critical" process, while warning that in more egregious cases larger penalties would be warranted.
A construction company has failed in its bid to stop potential strikes amid claims of union interference in the protected action ballot process, the FWC pointing out that it cannot make orders preventing industrial action yet to be endorsed or notified.
The FWC has urged the Defence Department to send "an authorised and properly instructed representative" to deadlocked bargaining negotiations at the Australian Submarine Corporation.
An employer supplying well workers for offshore gas operations in the Bass Strait was entitled to stand down most of them when Esso suspended their services during industrial action, but the FWC has made a preliminary finding that a small yet "significant" portion might have been unauthorised.
An "ineluctable finding" that the AFAP could not persuade pilot members at a Qantas subsidiary to vote up a new deal supported by the union has helped convince the FWC that it should make an intractable bargaining declaration sought by the airline.
In a significant decision acknowledged as potentially being viewed as "undemocratic", a FWC full bench majority has found it has the power to make a workplace determination on contested bargaining matters after a deal has already been approved by the Commission.
Qantas subsidiary Network Aviation looks likely to win an intractable bargaining declaration, after unions' last-minute decision not to oppose it, ahead of a hearing today.
