A Federal Court judge has upended the recently-adopted precept that unions are vicariously responsible for entry breaches by officials under the Fair Work Act's 'liabilities of bodies corporate' clause, declaring that a close examination of related cases reveals no support for the contention.
The SA Labor Party has pledged to criminalise wage theft if it retains power at the state election on March 17, with the worst repeat offenders facing jail terms of up to 15 years.
A court will next month decide whether to punish a former Toll employee after finding that he breached orders restraining him from publishing far-right nationalist videos in which he wears company-branded clothing.
The High Court has today accepted that courts can make orders to stop union officials seeking or accepting payments from their unions towards penalties imposed for unlawful conduct.
The Federal Court has accepted that the ABCC made a "genuine mistake" when it pursued CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor for his alleged involvement in a blockade at Sydney's Barangaroo project.
The TWU has been penalised more than $270,000 for failing to remove almost 21,000 unfinancial members from a state branch register over a 12-year period.
The Federal Court will consider whether a series of NTEU social media posts, campaign materials and protests constitute "coercive acts" that are disproportionate to any legitimate interests the union might have had in wanting to stop Murdoch University from terminating its 2014 agreement.
The FWO's costly pursuit of a cleaning company over inadvertent underpayments of $5200 over a nine-month period has drawn fire from a judge who questioned the "limited need for deterrence" in a case where Fair Work Act objectives could have been met through enforceable undertakings.
An employer could face a ninefold increase in fines ordered by the Federal Circuit Court after the FWO successfully appealed the judgment on the basis that it wrongly grouped contraventions as a single course of action.
