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 FWC has expanded on its reasons for rejecting an employer's request to terminate its own lock-out of workers so they could no longer take threatened industrial action, describing the "highly unusual" s424 application as inconsistent with the Fair Work Act's bargaining objectives.
A major plastics manufacturer has this morning applied for the FWC to halt protected action at a plant in Melbourne, where the AWU says the only current action is the employer's lockout of its members.
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.
Influential CFMMEU leader John Setka has flagged taking a "reasonable" approach to the next major bargaining round after the expected abolition of the ABCC, expressing hope that any significant industrial action can be avoided as members seek to keep pace with inflation.
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.
The Albanese Government's multi-employer bargaining regime will focus on low-paid workers and will not permit sector-wide or industry-wide strikes, according to documents tabled in the Senate.
The Productivity Commission says the workplace tribunal should have a "fast-track process" for early involvement in industrial disputes on the docks, while waterfront employers should have more options for taking their own protected action beyond lockouts.
Unions say an "eleventh hour" NSW Government ultimatum to seek to terminate deals covering train workers unless they call off all protected action by tomorrow afternoon is a clear example of the type of action that federal IR Minister Tony Burke will not support.