Qantas has struck enterprise agreements covering about 450 regional pilots at Sunstate and Eastern, the first to be negotiated since it announced a two-year wage freeze in May as part of its COVID-19 recovery plan.
The UWU has welcomed a new agreement that pays a 10% increase over three years to about 3000 Star Sydney casino workers and boosts annual leave to five weeks.
Wage rises in private sector enterprise agreements remain marooned at 2.6%, while public sector increases have dropped back to recent trends, according to new Attorney-General's Department data that appears to confirm that the pandemic has accelerated the long-running decline in bargaining.
In a decision illustrating the delicate balancing act required of the FWC when considering axing old agreements, a recently-employed worker has succeeding in having a security company's 15-year-old deal scrapped over the loud objections of all but a few of his fellow employees.
The CFMMEU has failed in an interlocutory court bid to enter tunnelling sites at Brisbane's $5 billion Cross River Rail Project, in the midst of a demarcation dispute with the AWU.
The AMWU claims it has won wage increases of at least 9.8% over three years for workers at a McCain Foods potato processing plant in Tasmania, as it pushes to bring their rates into line with their mainland counterparts.
The Federal Court has for the second time this month found that government-owned Airservices Australia failed to meet agreement obligations to consult over changes affecting air traffic controllers, despite its "valiant" attempt to distinguish between 'policies' and 'procedures'.
A senior FWC member has after highlighting the tribunal's significant efforts to aid compliance with agreement approval requirements thrown out an application made by an employer that thrice failed to give "intelligible" undertakings.
The FWC has rejected the CFMMEU's attempt to intervene in the approval of a two-worker deal it had no history of involvement in, dismissing concerns that the agreement was as part of a corporate "ruse" designed to cover employees of the business's far larger parent company.
The FWC has called out a union bargaining representative for his "unexplained" change of heart about in-person voting for a new deal occurring during a COVID-19 lockdown, noting that his opposition only surfaced after the non-appearance of two holidaying workers helped it get up by a slim margin.