An employer that made seven of its employees redundant without properly considering "job swaps" with others breached its statutory obligation to explore redeployment options, an FWC full bench has found.
Rio Tinto has agreed to sell its NSW coal interests – including the Coal & Allied operations that were at the centre of the late 1990s battle of the IR "titans" – to Chinese interests for $3.2 billion ($US2.45 billion).
The FWC has stayed the termination of the enterprise agreement for the Loy Yang power station and coal mine, conditional on CFMEU members refraining from taking any further industrial action until the appeal is decided.
A Federal Court judge has found it "may well be correct" that former Tasmanian union leaders Kevin Harkins and Nicole Wells – now a Tasmanian Industrial Commission member – received redundancy payouts in 2008 to which they were not entitled.
A court has refused to summarily dismiss a general protections claim instigated by two former CFMEU construction and general division NSW branch organisers who maintain they were driven out of their jobs for whistleblowing.
The tone around deadlocked negotiations over a new agreement at Parmalat's Echuca processing plant has shifted dramatically over the past 24 hours, both sides believing a resolution is near after agreeing to divide up and rework contentious clauses before reconvening early next week.
Despite ultimately having to arrest a key witness to give evidence on its behalf, the ABCC has failed to convince the Federal Court the CFMEU acted unlawfully by denying two members of a caulking company access to a building site in Melbourne.
A tribunal has ordered an employer to allow the CFMEU entry to a major freeway construction site to investigate suspected breaches of OHS laws amid claims of threats directed towards its "stressed and anxious" members.
The FWC has ordered the CFMEU's mining and energy division to stop inciting its members to ban overtime and take suspected sickies at AGL Energy's Loy Yang A power station.
