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denied an entry permit, finding a tribunal member held no obligation to signal that the official might have his rights withdrawn after 12 years due to a history of industrial law breaches.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.
A judge has in imposing a penalty on the CFMMEU for a worksite shutdown described as "something of a fiction" any belief that such fines will deter the union from future contraventions.
The FWC has renewed CFMMEU maritime division national secretary Paddy Crumlin's entry permit, but only after closely scrutinising his involvement in two unlawful industrial actions still before the courts.
AMMA and the ABCC have failed to convince the FWC that it should not issue entry permits to organisers fronting an AWU-CFMMEU alliance, despite its "inaccurate" representations and the recent lack of a genuine employment relationship.