The ACTU is close to finalising alcohol and other drug guidelines that support oral testing rather than the urine sampling regime favoured by some employers.
Senator George Brandis has today announced that the Heydon inquiry will be given until the end of 2015 to produce its report, after the royal commissioner told the attorney-general that some union officials appeared to regard their organisations as immune from "any social or community standard shared by other Australians".
The MUA is using its industrial muscle to extract up to $1 million from employers for training funds that the Heydon Royal Commission acknowledges are legitimate, the inquiry heard today.
Victorian police have won access to about 290 documents held by law firm Slater & Gordon that relate to an alleged slush fund run by former AWU official Bruce Wilson in 1992.
The impact on public sector bargaining of the implied constitutional limitation on Commonwealth interference with state governments is still not well enough understood, according to long-serving CPSU Victoria secretary Karen Batt.
The Federal Court has fined the HSU and three former Victorian officials a total of nearly $68,000 for financial governance irregularities, and, in a first under registered organisations legislation, ordered one of them to repay the union more than $26,000.
Former Victorian Solicitor-General John Cain will give evidence tomorrow and former prime minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday as the Heydon Royal Commission resumes its investigation of the alleged slush fund linked to the AWU in the early 1990s.
