Overlooked evidence and orders beyond the Commission's powers have led to two offshore oil and gas industry companies overturning FWC rulings that reduced the amount docked from workers' pay after they engaged in partial work bans.
A FWC presidential member has taken exception to a HSU official's description of a clinical handover area as a meal room suitable for conducting meetings, dismissing it as a "self-serving label. . . border[ing] on dishonest".
The FWC has found two types of proposed industrial action against an employer unlawful because they lack specificity, but has also labelled the company "disingenuous" for objecting to the original PABO, withdrawing its concerns and then re-ventilating them a month later.
The FWC has directed senior representatives of supermarket giant Woolworths and the UWU to meet and seek to resolve more than 1000 disputes Australia-wide over a new productivity framework in the company's warehouses, after an individual brought his grievance with the regime to the tribunal.
In a signal to employers that they must have systems in place to ensure they promptly provide information the FWC requires to launch a protected action ballot, the Federal Court has imposed a substantial fine on waste giant Cleanaway for a short delay in the "time-critical" process, while warning that in more egregious cases larger penalties would be warranted.
A construction company has failed in its bid to stop potential strikes amid claims of union interference in the protected action ballot process, the FWC pointing out that it cannot make orders preventing industrial action yet to be endorsed or notified.
A judge has warned the FWO of a possible "perception" it failed to comply with its model litigant obligations after dropping the "most serious" claim of threatening behaviour from a CFMEU right of entry case as part of a liability deal.
The FWC has urged the Defence Department to send "an authorised and properly instructed representative" to deadlocked bargaining negotiations at the Australian Submarine Corporation.
An employer is opposing a CFMEU request to have the FWC hold a joint post-PABO compulsory conciliation conference relating to two separate deals for its workers on the Cross River Rail project in South-East Queensland.
An employer supplying well workers for offshore gas operations in the Bass Strait was entitled to stand down most of them when Esso suspended their services during industrial action, but the FWC has made a preliminary finding that a small yet "significant" portion might have been unauthorised.
