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.
Towage company Svitzer is set to lock out its harbour tugboat workforce, claiming it has been forced into it by continuing disruptive protected action by three maritime unions.
Despite Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke's reluctance to hold back parts of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill and its many "positive reforms", a leading labour law and IR academic says drafting issues and crossbench concerns will make fast passage a challenge.
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 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.
