The Productivity Commission in a new report has repeated its call for governments to adopt Victorian-style procurement guidelines to regulate substandard IR conduct in the construction industry, but has warned they might need to be modified to avoid a clash with the Fair Work Act.
In a watershed anti-discrimination ruling, a full Federal Court has found community standards now demand higher compensation for non-economic loss in s--ual harassment cases, and has increased a former Oracle manager's overall damages award from less than $20,000 to $130,000.
Evidence to be presented to the Heydon Royal Commission by former CFMEU construction and general division NSW branch official Brian Fitzpatrick "reveals a troubling state of lawlessness" in the branch and the union that manifests in their preparedness to go to "war" against companies that incur their displeasure, according to its counsel assisting.
The Fair Work Commission says that excluding supervisor-level employees from enterprise agreements is normal practice, and that those seeking to be included via scope orders need to present strong evidence to win the day.
The Department of Employment has referred to the corporate watchdog allegations that a textile company entered into “contrived arrangements” to avoid paying redundancy entitlements to 60 workers.
A tribunal has temporarily banned from legal practice a solicitor who engaged in "intolerable, disgraceful and dishonourable" conduct when he s--ually harassed a legal trainee on eleven occasions in 2011.
The Fair Work Commission has ordered the MUA not to push for "Australians first" job clauses that might breach anti-discrimination laws during the hotly-contested enterprise bargaining round in the offshore oil and gas services sector.
A TNT Express driver who clumsily tried to extricate himself from a conversation that had s--ual undertones with a younger female retail store employee did not breach the company's harassment and discrimination policy, the Fair Work Commission has found.
Boral chief executive Mike Kane has told the Heydon Royal Commission that his company is contemplating new legal action against its competitors, customers and the CFMEU under competition law, labelling them as conspirators in a union campaign to deprive it of its Melbourne market share after it refused to cut off supplies to Grocon.
The Heydon Royal Commission has raised the possibility that the CFMEU's bans on Boral concrete supplies might have contravened anti-cartel and blackmail laws, in addition to flouting secondary boycott provisions.