Tensions over the new national agreement covering Coles supermarkets has boiled over into angry public exchanges between officials from the SDA and the meatworkers' union.
A FWC full bench has ruled invalid a major company's representational rights notice for departing from strict wording and content requirements, after giving the employer and unions the opportunity to respond to newly-published guidelines on the issue.
The Australian Shipowners Association has told the Productivity Commission that it is important to understand that the starting point for the bargaining changes it is seeking is the "disproportionate industrial power" wielded by the maritime unions.
The Fair Work Commission has approved a new four-year enterprise agreement for Mount Isa Mines that doesn't provide employees with annual pay increases, instead leaving them to the discretion of management.
An FWC full bench has emphasised that the tribunal should take a "global" rather than "line by line" approach when applying the better off overall test to agreements, while in another ruling the Commission has approved a deal with employer undertakings, despite union misgivings that it was originally voted up by only three employees who have since left the company.
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
There are "promising" early results from a 12-month pilot program that is seeking to speed-up the appeals process in the FWC and reduce parties' costs, according to the tribunal's president, Justice Iain Ross.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected a labour hire company's application to approve a deal without pay rates or restrictions on hours for its small, self-represented workforce, after granting the CFMEU permission to be heard as a "contradictor".
The former Labor Government's changes to the modern award objective have made it impossible for 24/7 industries such as hospitality to successfully prosecute cases to abolish penalty rates and should be scrapped, according to the peak body for restaurant employers.
The head of Networks NSW, which owns the power "poles and wires" entities that are to be privatised if the Coalition wins Saturday's NSW election, is pushing for FWC approval of agreements to be conditional on them undergoing an objective "productivity test" and is backing calls for the creation of a separate FWC appeals jurisdiction.
