Former NUW NSW branch secretary Derrick Belan has been sentenced to four years' jail on 60 charges that involved more than $650,000 of union funds, including personal spending on a tattoo, Botox treatments, holidays and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
The FWC has today ruled out a contentious rule change sought by a pilots union because it failed to abide by requirements to secure support from a two-thirds majority of its governing body.
United Voice secretary Jo Schofield has made it clear that the union won't accept "baby steps" in moving to a universal industry bargaining system if Labor wins the next election, saying a misplaced trust in enterprise bargaining has been damaging for its members.
In a significant ruling that might reduce penalties regulators can win for Fair Work Act breaches, the Federal Court has found that the legislation's double jeopardy provision prevents the imposition of separate fines for related contraventions arising from the same conduct.
The FWC has granted an entry permit to a former CFMEU official once fined $30,000 for blockading a worksite and abusing workers in a bid to coerce Grocon into making an agreement, hearing he became a "different person" once employed as an AWU organiser.
Economist and former Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission presidential member Joe Isaac has called for a major overhaul of IR laws to restore the power of unions and boost the "authority" of the IR tribunal to drive wages growth.
An employer has been set the challenge of reverse engineering an agreement rejected on the basis it was not genuinely agreed, after the FWC observed that while achievable through undertakings it was nonetheless a "difficult task".
A prison officer effectively sacked twice after pleading guilty to assaulting three inmates has again won his job back, an appeal court finding that the IR commissioner who originally reinstated him had correctly focused on what is fair and just, rather than "the reputation of the government".
In a rare case of an FWC member standing themselves down, a commissioner has found that comments she made about the "vexatious" applicants in a discontinued anti-bullying case could lead observers to question her impartiality when considering a counter anti-bullying application by the original respondent.
The CPSU says it will recommend Bureau of Meteorology workers reject a new agreement offer that relegates delegates' access rights to a side deal and makes them subject to management approval, vowing in the meantime to keep inserting campaign messages into the bureau's forecasts.
