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.
Citizens of nine of the Pacific's most vulnerable island nations and Timor-Leste will soon be able to work in the aged care sector in regional Australia following a Federal Government decision to establish a new Pacific Labour Scheme alongside the existing Seasonal Worker Programme.
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.
A court has found a husband and wife who performed largely home-based clerical work exclusively for one business before their services were further outsourced were employees rather than contractors because the company had an "undoubted authority to control" the relationship.
A cleaner who invoiced as both a sole trader and a company but claims he was an employee is pursuing Woolworths and three contracting businesses for more than $300,000 in underpaid wages and unpaid overtime, annual leave and superannuation he says he should have been paid between 2004 and 2015.
The FWC has reaffirmed its jurisdictional ambit to determine right-of-entry disputes after an employer questioned whether it was seeking to exercise judicial powers it does not possess.
Major construction company Laing O'Rourke has failed to convince the FWC that a current agreement clause could effectively render its NSW and ACT deals compliant with the building code, but the tribunal has recommended that the CFMEU and employees take all necessary steps to achieve compliance.
The Federal Court has rejected CFMEU argument that the Fair Work Act's explanatory memorandum compels a finding that union officials are entitled to exercise their entry rights to hold discussions with members and potential members before their shifts begin.
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".
