Legal page 542 of 571

A long history of employee complaints and the need to send a strong message to the hair and beauty industry that "it does not pay to underpay workers" has led to a hairdressing chain being fined $70,000 for short-changing an apprentice more than $8,000.

Alcoa Australia has been ordered to bargain with the CFMEU for an enterprise agreement to cover 15 power supply operators at its regional Victorian plant after the Fair Work Commission granted the union a majority support determination.

A software engineer breached his employment contract, his equitable duty of confidence, the Copyright Act and the Corporations Act when he downloaded more than 380,000 of his employer's files onto a hard drive, just before he resigned, a court has found.

The Fair Work Commission adjourned its inquiry into HSU Victorian No 1 branch entry permit applications this morning after branch general manager Kimberley Kitching indicated she would seek an urgent Federal Court order to compel the tribunal to rule on her argument that it has no jurisdiction to conduct the review.

The Australian Football League is arguing that its 120 media employees are not operationally and organisationally distinct from the rest of its workforce, as it tries to defeat a push by the MEAA for a majority support determination.

Upper House rejects election spending curb; Musicians to face the music; and Wilson to deliver Kingsley Laffer lecture.

A FWC full bench has ruled that in assessing whether reinstatement is appropriate in an unfair dismissal case, the tribunal should not take into account any ill-will arising from continuing legal proceedings between an employee and an employer.

In an important ruling on the definition of industrial action, the Federal Court has held that the provision of sensitive information to the media by employees is not "protected" under the Fair Work Act and might leave them vulnerable to breach of contract and coercion claims.

Another High Court case on the Fair Work Act's protections for employees engaged in union activity might not be far away, according to a leading IR academic, after the CFMEU's appeal against the Federal Court's BHP Coal "scab-sign" ruling was this morning rejected by a 3-2 majority.

RMIT honorary professor and long-serving IR academic Breen Creighton says Australian labour law legislation has been characterised by knee-jerk responses to non-existent problems, a lack of willingness to allow existing laws to deal with issues, and "political opportunism", which explains why the major statute had been amended five times a year on average since 2009.