CPSU members in 17 APS agencies are set to begin a campaign of rolling four-hour stoppages next month, as the union seeks to pressure the federal government to increase its sub-inflation pay offers.
The Abbott Government has quietly dropped re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission and creating the Registered Organisations Commission as "major priorities" in its 2015-16 Budget.
The Heydon Royal Commission will next week issue a discussion paper that will canvass whether penalties for union officials who breach their duties should be brought into line with those for company directors under the Corporations Act.
The Abbott Government's second budget looks to pick up more tax revenue from local FIFO employees and foreign workers visiting Australia, along with $845 million from changes to how work-related car expenses are calculated.
Nannies won't need formal childcare training to participate in the federal government's new $246m two-year trial to help shiftworkers and those in rural and regional areas to meet the costs of home-based care.
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
The Abbott Government has appointed to the High Court the Federal Court judge Michelle Gordon, who last month was part of a full bench that struck down the Coalition's attempt to exclude foreign workers on offshore resources projects from Australian labour standards.
There are "promising" early results from a 12-month pilot program that is seeking to speed-up the appeals process in the FWC and reduce parties' costs, according to the tribunal's president, Justice Iain Ross.
The Coalition's bill to re-establish the ABCC looks doomed in its current form, with two cross-bench senators already telling Parliament they will vote against it and at least one more set to do the same.