The Morrison Government's IR omnibus legislation is seeking to extend the terms of large greenfields agreements to eight years, closing the door on lawful mid-project industrial action while new deals are negotiated.
A full Federal Court has confirmed that 150 workers were entitled to be paid for the 20-minute bus ride to a major energy project's security gate at the end of each shift, after one of the judges rejected a request to recuse himself because he had acted for the employer during negotiations for the deal at the heart of the dispute.
ACTU secretary Sally McManus will tonight use a "robo-call" to about 500,000 lower and middle-income households to explain the union movement's aims heading into the first of the Morrison Government's IR change discussions tomorrow.
A multinational's trouble-plagued deal for a major LNG project has again come back to bite it, with the Federal Court finding its arguments about unpaid allowances created "confusion" rather than clarity.
Employers are urging the Morrison Government to let greenfields and non-greenfields deals span the full life of major projects, without requiring them to reflect prevailing industry conditions, while legal experts say project owners and developers should be able to make them.
The FWC has referred its decision to terminate a nominally-expired greenfields agreement to general manager Bernadette O'Neill to consider whether its 2014 approval relied on inaccurate statutory declarations made by the employer's managing director and a CFMMEU State leader.
An AWU leader has called on the CFMMEU's construction division to accept that courts and tribunals have determined that the AWU is the "principal union" in civil construction and tunnelling.
The FWC has held that a construction giant did not breach good faith bargaining requirements by secretly making two greenfields deals with the AWU without telling other unions who believed they were jointly negotiating a project agreement.
Now that the Morrison Government has decided to extend the maximum terms of greenfields agreements for major projects, employers say the principle should apply more widely to non-greenfields agreements covering subcontractors on such jobs.
In a decision traversing some of the challenges of protecting hard-won conditions in a difficult commercial environment, the CFMMEU has failed to block the termination of a construction deal no longer covering any workers after the company argued its uncompetitive terms and conditions hampered its ability to win new contracts.