The Australian Football League is arguing that its 120 media employees are not operationally and organisationally distinct from the rest of its workforce, as it tries to defeat a push by the MEAA for a majority support determination.
The first female secretary of the RTBU's Victorian branch, Luba Grigorovitch, is set to lead a ticket in next month's union elections, after the Federal Court rejected a rival faction's challenge to her candidacy.
The ACTU is close to finalising alcohol and other drug guidelines that support oral testing rather than the urine sampling regime favoured by some employers.
Senator George Brandis has today announced that the Heydon inquiry will be given until the end of 2015 to produce its report, after the royal commissioner told the attorney-general that some union officials appeared to regard their organisations as immune from "any social or community standard shared by other Australians".
The MUA is using its industrial muscle to extract up to $1 million from employers for training funds that the Heydon Royal Commission acknowledges are legitimate, the inquiry heard today.
Victorian police have won access to about 290 documents held by law firm Slater & Gordon that relate to an alleged slush fund run by former AWU official Bruce Wilson in 1992.
The impact on public sector bargaining of the implied constitutional limitation on Commonwealth interference with state governments is still not well enough understood, according to long-serving CPSU Victoria secretary Karen Batt.