Agreements and bargaining page 8 of 174

A FWC full bench has refused to extend a farm's 16-year-old deal for 12 weeks beyond next month's sunsetting of zombie agreements, describing the application as an effort to pay below-award rates for "one more" onion-picking season.

WA's St John Ambulance has failed to convince the FWC that its agreement requires paramedics who are not the primary carer of a child to clock up a full year of employment before they can access eight days paid leave after a birth or adoption.

Employers are using the new intractable bargaining declaration provisions to undercut pay and conditions by trying to revisit agreed terms, which is inconsistent with the legislation's aim of breaking bargaining deadlocks, United Firefighters Union national secretary Peter Marshall told the Loopholes inquiry this morning.

Queensland Council of Unions secretary Jacqueline King says Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke is "receptive" to calls for new gender equity laws replicating the State's legislation that has "made more of a difference" in its first year than in the previous two decades under the Queensland IRC's equal remuneration principle.

The UWU has struck in-principle agreements covering thousands of workers at Melbourne's Crown casino after management tabled an improved offer, which averted planned protected industrial action in the form of a mass walk-out on Saturday evening.

The Qantas "weaponisation" of labour hire underlines the need for the "same job, same pay" provisions in Labor's Closing Loopholes legislation, according to the airline's flight crew union.

A FWC presidential member has taken a harder line on extending notice periods for protected action, rejecting Virgin Australia's bid to increase warnings of strikes and bans from three to seven days, because it would result in diminished worker bargaining power.

Biotechnology giant CSL has made a rare application for bargaining orders against two maintenance unions, the ETU and AMWU, whose members voted up protected action ballots in September.

Container terminal operator DP World says it is facing continuing protected action by MUA members until at least November 13, as the cost of the parties' bargaining impasse mounts.

A lawyer for early childhood education employers involved in the sector's supported bargaining test case says that for future applications where participants are not as aligned, he suspects it will be a slow, challenging and "very cumbersome process", while a union leader in the case says the FWC is helping to bring the parties together.