The FWC's national practice leader for bargaining has started the clock on compulsory conciliation while a strike vote is conducted, having also used one of the first applications under new workplace laws to suggest that while the "recency" of the provisions made a case for endorsing an unapproved ballot agent, the bar will be higher in future.
NTEU members have voted to escalate industrial action, including another state-wide strike, if Victorian universities maintain their refusal to of union demands to replace most casual jobs with permanent positions.
More than 1,000 domestic cabin crew at Qantas have authorised protected action including 24-hour strikes and overtime bans in the lead-up to the busy pre-Christmas travel period, as their union resists the airline's push for longer rostered hours and to hold annual pay rises to 3% as inflation soars.
In a significant ruling on the wording of strike ballots, a FWC full bench has found that the Commission should not dictate which questions can be posed or how they are framed.
A court has told the RTBU it will have to wait until next year to learn whether it might be exposed to damages after Sydney Trains workers bargaining for a new deal gave customers "free rides" as part of industrial action over a six-week period.
In what looms as a showdown over BHP's in-house labour hire operation, the miner's Queensland coal workforce has overwhelmingly voted to take industrial action in pursuit of a new deal built around job security.
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to stop planned strikes at a $1 billion lithium plant, after finding that its interpretation of notification requirements would effectively shave a day off the protected period.
The RTBU says an "unprecedented" NSW Government court case claiming that deactivating Opal card readers at Sydney train stations is not protected action and seeking to recoup lost revenue will force it to revert to disruptive strikes, as the union files its own court action in response.
The NTEU is challenging a FWC decision to knock out the bulk of its "ambiguous" questions in a Curtin University protected action ballot, including proposed bans on responding to phone calls and emails, working outside of ordinary hours or attending work events.
Sydney Trains' request for extra notice of RTBU plans to turn off Opal readers and gates so it could safely do so itself has been rejected by the FWC, a senior member observing that on the employer's own evidence it would only make any potential disruption worse.
