Employees in Employment Minister Michaelia Cash's department have narrowly voted-up a new enterprise deal that provides a 6% pay increase over three years.
Resources minister says project agreements worth considering; Workers have "right to know" how transition from fossil fuels will be managed, says Burrow; Public and private sector IT professionals' pay rises "diverging"; and Queensland Parliament rejects LNP bid to reverse entry rules.
Tug operator Svitzer has moved to a single national agreement, after the FWC rejected objections from one of three unions that the company had unfairly selected the employees to be covered.
FWC accepts PC report as submission rather than evidence; Heerey report due at end of month; Patrick talks continuing; Productivity portfolio dropped in Turnbull's reshuffle; and MUA tells members not to respond to FWO overtures.
Patrick and the MUA have today begun four days of assisted negotiations, despite an FWC full bench yesterday clearing the way for the union to resume industrial action.
Some 35,000 Department of Human Services employees began voting on Friday on a proposed deal delivering a 2% annual pay rise, while the FWC has recently approved agreements for three mid-sized APS agencies providing the same quantum to about 8,500 employees.
An FWC full bench has today overruled a decision that an employer breached good faith bargaining obligations when it insisted on conducting enterprise agreement negotiations by teleconference rather than face-to-face meetings.
The Fair Work Commission, in a decision published today, says it suspended the MUA's protected industrial action at Patrick container terminals to allow further private negotiations to be assisted by presidential member Anna Booth.
Stevedore Patrick will tomorrow ask the FWC to impose a cooling-off period to stop MUA members taking further industrial action at its container ports.
An FWC presidential member has expressed "wonder" at having to reject an agreement for a major labour hire company that turned the simple process of providing employees with a bargaining representation notice into a "debacle".
