An exploding secondary labour market of people who can't enforce their rights is driving down wages and bargaining power while creating a "tinder box of exploitation", unions have told this year's NSW IR Society conference.
The Australian Federation of Employers and Industries is calling on the FWC to dismiss the Independent Education Union's equal pay claim on behalf of early childhood teachers, drawing on an expert report to attack its use of primary school teachers and engineers as comparators.
The Registered Organisations Commission has initiated a prosecution of the AWU's Victorian branch and its former secretary, Cesar Melhem, for allegedly failing to remove 2,000 unfinancial members from the books over a five-year period through to 2013.
The ACTU will today release a jobs policy that calls for an end to public sector wage caps and pay freezes, along with calling time on the use of "illegitimate" fixed-term contracts in government jobs.
Legislation introduced to Parliament today by the Greens would empower the FWC to make "minimum entitlements orders" to bring gig and other "non-standard" workers under the protection of the Fair Work Act.
The AFP have agreed to pay former CFMEU organiser John Lomax an undisclosed settlement after he sued them for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution over his alleged blackmail of a Canberra painting company during enterprise agreement negotiations.
The FWC has found it reasonably arguable that the NUW is involved in a coordinated approach to involve itself in bargaining at Linfox despite being ineligible to represent its tanker drivers, issuing production orders regarding a non-Linfox NUW delegate who seeks to be a bargaining representative.
Key witnesses in this week's collapsed criminal case against two Victorian CFMEU leaders told the Melbourne Magistrates Court that nobody mentioned the word "blackmail" to them until more than a year after a crucial meeting in April 2013.
Having only recently been given the all-clear over a heavily-scrutinised $75,000 payment while at the CEPU, former Unions Tasmania secretary and political aspirant Kevin Harkins will face a Federal Court judge next month as the ABCC pursues him over "abusive" entry breaches.
A year after its establishment, the Registered Organisations Commission has begun its first court case, seeking penalties against the CEPU for allegedly failing to keep an accurate list of its offices and office holders on numerous occasions over a period of more than two years.