The MUA has vowed to resist what it claims are "common" efforts by stevedoring companies to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to slash wages and conditions on the waterfront.
In a case of curious timing, the FWC has endorsed a council's mid-pandemic scrapping of an enduring work-from-home arrangement on the basis it fell outside the purview of a flexible work agreement clause.
The FWC has let a construction company bin a 5% pay rise that came into effect in February plus next year's increase, despite CFMMEU evidence that some workers felt pressured to support the COVID-19 variation in a ballot that identified their vote.
A pandemic-affected employer has succeeded in having redundancy payments to four workers slashed by almost 70%, the FWC finding its perilous cash position and obligation to remaining employees outweighed the impact on the quartet.
Court finding on notice period change shredded; Call to halt wage theft law until working party concludes; Industry super paper concedes employees might bear costs of super rises; and $15K for academic in "labyrinthine" case.
In a significant decision examining how employers can lawfully assess "useful work" when standing down employees, the FWC has ruled a pandemic-affected cruise operator acted "upon proper principles" when transferring some of a superintendent's duties to others.
The FWC has found it unreasonable of Qantas to only pay the equivalent of two fortnightly JobKeeper payments to a monthly paid manager who worked for part of the period, in a decision the ASU wants applied to the rest of its workforce.
Qantas has failed in its challenge to FWC powers to review how it applied the JobKeeper scheme to a worker claiming he was short-changed, a full bench finding among other reasons that the airline's characterisation of the dispute was "somewhat artificial".
In a matter a judge has speculated could have "wide ramifications" regarding stand-downs, Qantas and Jetstar have won an injunction stopping the FWC from arbitrating a dispute concerning hundreds of engineers rendered idle by the pandemic.
More than 200,000 award-covered fast food industry workers face temporary cuts to part-time hours and reduced overtime penalties under fiercely-contested, pandemic-related changes approved by an FWC full bench.