Agreements and bargaining page 14 of 176

Victoria's Andrews Labor government says the FWC should order a "confined" four-week period of post-declaration bargaining if it grants the IBD sought by the UFU in a bid to break a deadlock with Fire Rescue Victoria.

The High Court has today unanimously held that Qantas took unlawful adverse action against nearly 2000 former ground crew when it outsourced their jobs at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when their agreements were due to nominally expire.

FWC President Adam Hatcher today timetabled Chevron's applications for three intractable bargaining declarations at its Western Australian LNG operations, setting down a full bench hearing hearing from September 22, while also directing the company to resume mediation.

The Fair Work Act's continuing focus on single-enterprise bargaining, along with weak underpinning awards and supported bargaining's restriction to multi-employer rather than sector-wide bargaining, will limit the new stream's capacity to achieve "decent wages" for low-paid female employees, according to leading IR academics.

Mandating equality bargaining and creating an enforceable positive gender equality duty could improve workplace gender equality, academics say in a new article in the Journal of IR.

The FWC has rejected the HSU's bid to extend a zombie deal for two years, backing the ASU's position in finding it failed the BOOT, and granting only a four month reprieve to negotiate a new agreement.

A logistics company has failed to win approval for a greenfields deal as it only notified the MUA's WA branch despite provisions for future national expansion, and it offers "substantially inferior" pay and conditions.

As Chevron workers prepare to start industrial action this afternoon and the FWC continues week-long talks to resolve the underlying bargaining dispute for its Wheatstone downstream and Gorgon facilities, the tribunal's president will conduct a preliminary hearing next week of the company's bid for an intractable bargaining declaration for its Wheatstone platform.

The IEU is urging Queensland's Catholic school teachers and support staff to reject a "punitive" proposed agreement that it claims will deliver the biggest cuts to their working conditions in two decades, but the employer says there are "no cuts".

The FWC will probe potential "wider-scale abuse" of agreement-making under the Fair Work Act after quashing the approval of a Chevron contractor's labour hire deal made with six "employees" in a sham process "entirely lacking in authenticity and moral authority".