The Federal Court at a directions hearings on Friday will deal with multimillion dollar bids by Qube Logistics and Patrick Stevedores to sue the MUA and officials for damages as a result of bans earlier this year on loading and unloading containers at Port Botany.
The High Court has this morning refused a CFMEU bid for special leave to challenge a full Federal Court majority ruling that increased penalties twelve-fold after after accepting that it could not treat a "lawful request" or a party's motivation for taking coercive industrial action as a mitigating factor when determining fines.
A CFMEU-backed class action brought against an employer for allegedly underpaying 150 workers more than $1 million for travel time stands to recast agreement wording on the precise location where a job begins and ends.
The FWC looks set to reduce by a week its hearings into an application by Coles nightfill worker Penny Vickers to terminate the 2011 agreement, after warning that granting further extensions could render her case moot if the retailer gets a new agreement approved.
The Turnbull Government has blasted a major builder that negotiated a precedent-setting enterprise agreement with the CFMEU as being "highly unrepresentative" of the construction industry, describing the deal as an act of "commercial self-harm".
Wesfarmers has avoided having chief executive Richard Goyder put on the witness stand ahead of the FWC later this year hearing Penny Vickers' bid to terminate its 2011 supermarkets agreement, after a full bench accepted that the parent company had no role in approving the retailer's 2014 enterprise deal.
The SDA and rival Retail and Fast Food Workers Union have within a month of each other filed bids to terminate Domino's Pizza agreements, while the fast food chain says it has been increasing employees' pay via "discretionary entitlements" and expects to soon have a BOOT-compliant enterprise deal.
In a case likely to have ramifications for hundreds of existing enterprise deals, the High Court has reserved its decision in Aldi's appeal against a decision knocking out a controversial agreement on the basis it was agreed by prospective employees not yet covered by it.
A full Federal Court has fined the CFMEU $300,000 and the CEPU $130,000 over a 2011 industrial campaign; penalties that are almost three times higher than originally sought by the construction watchdog.