Coles Supermarkets is a step closer to putting to ballot a single retail deal covering 80,000 workers, after the Fair Work Commission comprehensively rejected a TWU scope order application for online delivery drivers, finding they were an "integrated and integral part" of the company's retail operations.
The licenced aircraft engineers' union is urging the "liberalisation" of union coverage rules, saying that if they didn't exist at all, the industrial unrest that fuelled the bargaining battle between the union and Qantas might have been diminished before the airline dramatically shut down its operations and locked out its workforce in 2011.
A modern award is set to be stripped of a discriminatory clause that has prevented 13 older employees accessing between 40 and 60 weeks redundancy pay over the past 18 months.
Australia could consider adopting a Kiwi-style statutory good faith obligation after the High Court's finding that there is no implied duty of mutual trust and confidence in employment contracts, according to a senior law academic.
The Department of Employment has crunched the numbers on Australia's 122 modern awards, finding that just half provide for weekend penalty loadings, and 26 rule them out.
The FWC has refused to issue a new entry permit to an AMWU organiser who engaged in "egregious" conduct during the notorious Westgate Bridge dispute in 2009, and has described as "baffling" a 2011 decision to grant him a permit.
In a case set aside until the High Court ruled on the Mammoet accommodation dispute, the Fair Work Commission has found that coal mining workers should have been paid their safety and production allowance while they were taking protected action during a bargaining battle.
The NSW Public Service Association says its axing of an assistant secretary position has boosted its war chest to fight the state government's electricity privatisation plans.
The Fair Work Commission has dismissed the unfair dismissal claims of two highly-paid managers because their allowances elevated their remuneration beyond the high income threshold.
ASX top 100 company Asciano, which estimates that its subsidiary Patrick's last bruising bargaining round cost it $21 million, is calling for a greater role for the Fair Work Commission in "agreement facilitation".
