Australia

On 26 October 2021, the Australian stevedoring company Patrick applied to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to terminate its existing enterprise agreement with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).
If successful, the stevedores would lose the pay and conditions they had negotiated for years and go back to minimum industry standards unless a new deal was negotiated within six months. Over 1,000 dock workers were covered by the agreement.
The MUA and Patrick had begun negotiations for a new agreement about two years earlier. The MUA agreed to forgo its original claim for annual six per cent pay increases over four years and accepted Patrick’s 2.5 per cent increases, well below the current consumer price index rise of 3.8 per cent.
Patrick blamed the MUA for unreasonable demands, notably the request that they consult the union over a proportion of new hires. The MUA pointed out that similar agreements had been reached with other major port operators. On their side, the workers were opposed to Patrick’s use of casual labour, its current rostering regime and recruitment plans.
University of Sydney labour law Professor Shae McCrystal pointed out that the termination of the agreement was “quite a significant threat” because even the spectre of it put employers in a more powerful bargaining position.
The MUA’s national secretary Paddy Crumlin called Patrick’s move an arrogant, bullying, intimidatory attack on its workers that showed why an agreement had not been reached yet.
The dispute brought back memories of the 1998 Waterfront Dispute between the company and the MUA when Patrick sacked its 1,400 unionised workers and replaced them with contracted workers.

By mid-October 2021 management at the QUBE Fremantle Port container terminal in Western Australia was still refusing to reenter negotiations with the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) over a lengthy dispute, despite being called on to do so by Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan, several ministers and the Fair Work Commission.
Over 120 members of the MUA had been on strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike since 30 July for an improved enterprise agreement. At the heart of the dispute was the roster system. QUBE workers were not on fixed rosters and were only told their schedule at 4 p.m. on the day before. The union asked that, as a minimum, shifts be allocated by 2 p.m. on the previous day, but management consistently refused.
The MUA said workers wanted rosters that give a better work-life balance, improved fatigue management and improved job security. However, QUBE management rejected all 42 of the union’s claims.
Industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. began with four-hour stoppages and work bans on overtime, shift extensions and weekend work. Then management imposed a lockout lockout A form of industrial action whereby an employer refuses work to its employees or temporarily shuts down operations. that dragged on for weeks. QUBE assigned its own management and supervisory staff to do stevedoring work to try and keep the terminal operating. The MUA warned that safety regulations were being ignored and vessels were taking twice as long as normal to unload, causing a bottleneck at the port.
At the end of October, after the dispute had dragged on for 11 weeks, the MUA was forced to suspend industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. , further to a threat from the federal Liberal-National government that it would ask the Fair Work Commission to terminate all industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. at QUBE and impose compulsory arbitration arbitration A means of resolving disputes outside the courts through the involvement of a neutral third party, which can either be a single arbitrator or an arbitration board. In non-binding arbitration, the disputing parties are free to reject the third party’s recommendation, whilst in binding arbitration they are bound by its decision. Compulsory arbitration denotes the process where arbitration is not voluntarily entered into by the parties, but is prescribed by law or decided by the authorities.

See conciliation, mediation .

On 19 September 2021, the delivery company StarTrack made an application to the Fair Work Commission to stop a 24-hour strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike by the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) planned for 23 September. The company claimed that it would interrupt the transportation of medical supplies and vaccines.
However, the TWU had provided an undertaking to StarTrack to not disrupt vital supplies and requested detail as to which yards and workers were involved in the transport of vaccines and medical supplies to ensure those union members would not participate in the strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike .
In August 2021 StarTrack had failed to convince the Fair Work Commission to block a protected action ballot. At no point during those hearings did StarTrack raise any concerns regarding vaccines or medical supplies.
The Fair Work Commmission ruled that the strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike could go ahead. It was part of a series of actions by the TWU seeking greater job security guarantees, a request that had been refused by StarTrack for months.

On 17 August 2021 the commonwealth director of public prosecutions withdrew criminal cartel charges against the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the CFMEU ACT secretary Jason O’Mara.
The case, which opened in February 2021, was brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and was the third recent criminal prosecution against the CFMEU to collapse before trial.
The ACCC had alleged that, in 2012 and 2013, the CFMEU-ACT had tried to induce local steel fixers and scaffolders to set a minimum price to afford a wage rise. This, it said, was cartel behaviour. The union and O’Mara disputed the accusations.
Dave Noonan, CFMEU national construction secretary, said the case was “an abuse of power by the ACCC and should never have proceeded to court”. The union described the case as an attempt to weaponise the Consumer and Competition Act to attack the right of trade unions to collectively bargain.
“The ACCC has engaged in the blatant victimisation of Jason O’Mara, who has endured three years of trial by media and attack on his character,” Dave Noonan added.

Transnational company Konecranes Demag locked out ten Tasmanian maintenance workers without pay on 5 August 2021 in a dispute over the company’s proposed enterprise agreement.
The lockout lockout A form of industrial action whereby an employer refuses work to its employees or temporarily shuts down operations. was the company’s response to low-level work bans that followed 12 months of negotiations with the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) members. Workers were demanding their wages and conditions be brought in line with other maintenance fitters and engineers doing similar work in Tasmania.
The company used fly-in fly-out workers from other Australian states to work in their place. The state Liberal government allowed the company to circumvent COVID-19 travel restrictions by reclassifying the fly-in fly-out strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike breakers as essential workers.
The lockout lockout A form of industrial action whereby an employer refuses work to its employees or temporarily shuts down operations. was still in operation by late October 2021.

McCain Foods in Tasmania locked out its workers on 22 July 2021 after the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) gave notice of their intention to begin industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. .
The planned strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike was over the workers’ demands for a pay increase to compensate for a wage cut in 2020 following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Tasmanian workers who produce potato chips want pay equity with McCain employees on the Australian mainland and employees at Simplot, a nearby food manufacturer. Simplot workers are paid 15 per cent more than McCain’s Smithton, Tasmania, employees.
Initially the Fair Work Commission backed McCain Foods decision to lock workers out before they had taken industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. . The AMWU appealed the ruling and on re-examining the case, the Commission found the workers had been unlawfully locked out. A legal expert and the union argued that the initial decision would have been dangerous and would have limited the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike if it had been upheld.
AMWU urged McCain to return to the bargaining table in good faith.

On 28 June 2021, a Federal Court judge roundly criticised the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for its claims against a delegate from the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) who raised safety concerns.
In July 2019 the CFMMEU union representative on Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel project told his co-workers to down tools because of problems with the first-aid room. The ABCC initially brought charges against 11 union members for delaying work, but after mediation mediation A process halfway between conciliation and arbitration, in mediation a neutral third party assists the disputing parties in reaching a settlement to an industrial dispute by suggesting possible, non-binding solutions.

See arbitration, conciliation , dropped the case against them in order to focus on the union delegate,
Steven Parker. The ABCC claimed that the safety concerns were not real and were just a “pretext”. The judge in the case found that the delegate had a reasonable belief that the safety concerns were legitimate and criticised the ABCC for pursuing arguments that were not supported by the agreed facts. He concluded that it was “bordering on the improper for the ABCC to have invited the Court to proceed in these penalty proceedings”.

Dave Noonan, CFMEU national construction secretary, said after the case: “The ABCC uses coercive and intrusive powers to pursue construction workers for engaging in what would be ordinary industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. in any other industry.”

Industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. by port workers at the Kwinana Bulk Terminal in Western Australia was met with an aggressive response by the Fremantle Port Authority.
The dispute began in June 2021 after the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) commissioned a forensic audit that found more than 100 Fremantle Ports workers had been underpaid an average of AU$6,000 a year for at least six years, with some short-changed more than AU$10,000 a year. The audit followed revelations of alleged corruption by a former Fremantle Ports manager who was accused of funnelling more than AU$5 million from the Western Australia (WA) government-owned port operator to offshore bank accounts.
Workers began staggered one-hour stoppages, spread across workgroups to reduce the potential impacts on terminal operations. Fremantle Ports responded by standing down all workers whenever any workgroup undertook lawful industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. .
On 23 June it was reported that the port authority’s action had effectively shut down the terminal for five hours a day, causing significant delays and forcing a bulk carrier to divert to another port.
In the words of MUA WA Assistant Branch Secretary Jeff Cassar, “It appears that Fremantle Ports are willingly sabotaging their own operations, and causing significant delays to their customers, in an effort to exaggerate the effects of this minor industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. .”

On 15 June 2021, the UK and Australian governments announced they had reached a free trade agreement (FTA) “in principle”. It had been negotiated behind closed doors for nearly a year. Trade unions were not consulted about the text of the agreement and its impact on workers. There were fears that the terms of the FTA would undermine workers’ rights and further sideline trade unions.
The unions of both countries had made clear their position at the start of the process, with the UK’s Trades Unions Congress (TUC) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) releasing a joint statement in September 2020 outlining the expectations of workers in both countries.
Information available about the negotiations, however, indicated that the FTA failed to meet the goals set out by the unions at the start of negotiations.
The ACTU and TUC called on the Australian and UK governments to immediately engage with trade unions to address their concerns, including, notably, fears that the UK-Australia trade deal may include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which gives multinational corporations special rights to sue governments over actions that threaten their profits, which could including renationalising public services or introducing new workers’ rights. The two national union centres also fear that the agreement may not contain measures to adequately enforce and protect labour rights.
TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady stated: “Trade deals can have a significant impact on workers’ jobs and rights, which is why it’s so important unions are involved in discussions”, adding that “this looks like it will be yet another UK trade deal with no enforceable labour standards, which could lead to a race to the bottom on workers’ rights. That is unacceptable.”
The deal had not been finalised by the end of October 2021.

On 6 July 2021, the Australian Services Union (ASU) reported that the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) had broken off negotiations with it and was trying to rush through a sub-standard enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA). The ASU had several concerns about the proposed EBA, including the below-inflation pay “increase” and the risk that many employees would no longer be protected by the agreement. The scope of the new EBA meant that staff could be taken off it if they were promoted or transferred within the company.

The owners of the Better Read Than Dead bookshop resorted to harassment and intimidation to delay and frustrate collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
.
The workers began campaigning in late 2020 for an enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) with guarantees of formal contracts, a workplace safety policy and a living wage. At a meeting in March 2021, the owners initially agreed to an EBA. Their lawyers later contacted the workers’ union, the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU), however, saying they had done so only under duress.
The owners then sent “cease and desist” letters to RAFFWU, demanding it immediately take down a social media post featuring a photo of workers holding the union’s flag. RAFFWU did so, but the owners still demanded two staff members attend “show cause” meetings (where workers must show why disciplinary proceedings should not be taken against them), in which their jobs were threatened.
Finally, on 14 May, Better Read Than Dead agreed to negotiate. Then RAFFWU applied for a protected action ballot order, allowing workers to vote on industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. , and it was approved by the Fair Work Commission on 22 June after management did not to object.
Negotiations began, but management consistently refused the union’s proposals for an agreement. One of the bargaining representatives said they had been “shouted out of the room” in their second meeting with management, and two workers had been sacked for campaigning, including one of the bargaining representatives.
In mid-July the workers unanimously voted to take industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. . Management responded by locking the workers out on 26 July, but the next day RAFFWU members announced they had reached an in-principle agreement with management and would return to work.
Management later reneged on the agreement, and in November the workers resumed industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. .

On 27 April 2021, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) reported that it had filed court action against a McDonald’s franchisee, Delbridge Investments Pty Ltd, for denying workers a rest break, in breach of the McDonald’s Enterprise Agreement and the industry-wide Fast Food Award.
The 25 workers represented in the SDA’s case were told they could have a soft drink in lieu of a 10-minute rest break. One of the workers, a 22-year-old, said they had worked at West Lakes McDonald’s for six years without being offered a rest break once.
The secretary for the South Australia branch of the SDA, Josh Peak, pointed out: “McDonald’s is the first job for many teenagers across Australia. These workers are expected to work in these hot, fast-paced environments and must get their breaks.”
The union is seeking thousands of dollars in compensation for workers who did not get the breaks they were legally entitled to. In November 2021 the case was still ongoing.

On 26 March 2021, Hay Point Services Pty Ltd (HPS), a company providing port services, was found guilty of breaching its enterprise agreement with the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU).
The enterprise agreement contains a clause to deal with overtime, which provides that HPS “may require an employee to work reasonable overtime, and the employee shall work such overtime as required”.
HPS, however, implemented a new roster that effectively required employees to work 455 hours of overtime per year, or 8.7 hours per week. The CFMMEU argued that this breached the overtime clause, as the additional hours could not be considered “reasonable”.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the CFMMEU had sent a letter to HPS when the changes were announced, warning the company that it would breach the enterprise agreement if it implemented the roster change. HPS went ahead regardless. Breaching an enterprise agreement is in contravention of the Australian Fair Work Act (2009).
The judge involved in the case imposed a fine of AU$40,500.00 on HPS, which amounted to 75 per cent of the maximum penalty for a single contravention, saying it should “reflect the seriousness of the conduct”.

Unions might mount huge workplace strikes in a massive campaign against the federal government’s sprawling industrial relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue changes, slammed as “the worst thing since WorkChoices” on Wednesday.
Australian politics is set for another sea-change in industrial relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue (IR) rules, with the Labor party promising to block the changes, which opposition leader Anthony Albanese called “nasty” and “draconian”.
Under the government’s IR omnibus bill, finally introduced into parliament on Wednesday after days of various leaked details, employers may alter workers’ pay and conditions if a business has been affected by the pandemic.
Industrial Relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue Minister Christian Porter said this would have to be applied for and approved by the Fair Work Commission, and the power to do so would be wound back in 2023. But unions fear it will lead to workers being locked into unfair workplace agreements.
At the heart of the bill are proposed changes to the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT), a workplace bargaining safeguard that means enterprise agreements in individual workplaces can be approved only if they offer workers better conditions than under standard awards.
Under the changes outlined on Wednesday, employers would have more power to apply to the Fair Work Commission to approve agreements that would normally fail the BOOT. The workplace watchdog would consider the effects of COVID on the workplace.
The bill also aims to slash the time the commission may take to approve enterprise agreements to 21 days.
Mr. Albanese said the changes would be a betrayal of workers.

Australian Federal Police officers have committed several raids at union properties across Sydney, including the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union headquarters in Pyrmont, as part of an investigation targeting officials from CFMEU.
A spokesman for the police has confirmed a trade union taskforce investigation has resulted in the execution of search warrants. The raids — on both CFMEU offices and homes — began early on 10 November, but no arrests have been made at this stage.
The CFMEU’s national construction secretary, Dave Noonan, confirmed the search warrant in a statement. “The union is cooperating to the extent required by law,” he said.
The AFP have been taking an increasingly active role in industrial relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue matters and previously raided CFMEU offices in Canberra and Brisbane. Neither of those raids resulted in any charges being laid against any union official. In the case of Canberra, the AFP actions were found to be unlawful by the ACT Supreme Court.

IndustriALL Global Union affiliate the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) successfully applied to the national industrial arbitrator to force Shell to agree to bargaining on the Prelude FLNG offshore platform.
Under Australian labour law, if a majority of employees want to be represented by a union in collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
and the union can satisfy the national industrial tribunal of this, the company must negotiate in good faith with the union. Shell had previously resisted bargaining with the AWU, saying that it did not believe a majority of employees were in favour of a formal bargaining process.
The AWU applied to the Australian national industrial arbitrator, the Fair Work Commission, asking for the opportunity to prove that employees wanted to be represented. The union collected signed petitions from employees that stated they wanted to commence bargaining for a collective agreement.
In response to Shell’s reluctance to rely on the petitions collected by the AWU, the Fair Work Commission permitted Shell to conduct a formal, anonymous ballot of Shell’s workforce on the Prelude, the world’s largest floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform and the largest offshore facility ever constructed. Over 90 per cent of employees voted, and approximately 80 per cent voted in favour of bargaining. After the outcome was announced, Shell agreed to initiate bargaining by 16 December.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has intervened in the emerging industrial dispute industrial dispute A conflict between workers and employers concerning conditions of work or terms of employment. May result in industrial action. between Patrick Stevedores and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) to remind international shipping companies that they are undermining the human rights of the port workers to collectively bargain for a fair industrial agreement.
ITF General Secretary Stephen Cotton expressed concern at the rhetoric of the Australian government as they threatened to send troops to break the port workers’ legal industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. and deny them their rights under Australian legislation and international law.
These threats come as dock workers have protested against their employer’s deep cuts to their workplace conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cotton said the MUA had worked hard to ensure the dispute did not adversely affect the Australian people. On 2 September 2020, the MUA wrote to Patrick Stevedores requesting measures to ensure medical supplies could make it through any protected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. .
Furthermore, in August, the MUA offered to suspend all industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. at Patrick terminals if the company resumed meaningful negotiations; this offer was reportedly refused. The MUA has since expressed fears that Patrick Stevedores is attempting to manufacture a crisis at Port Botany in order to advance plans to slash the collective agreement without government opposition.
The ITF has also reported at least two major international shipping companies that the federation believes have involved themselves in the dispute on the side of the port company, needlessly diverting ships from Botany Bay to create the impression of a work stoppage crisis.
The dispute continues, with the ITF Dockers’ Section Coordinator, Enrico Tortolano, saying that dockers’ unions across the world were now getting prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the MUA.

The Morrison government has restricted bargaining rights and handed a windfall to the scandal-plagued for-profit superannuation sector.
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Your Superannuation, Your Choice) restricts workers’ rights to bargain for a single superannuation fund or set of funds in an enterprise agreement.
This bill is a gift to the underperforming for-profit bank-owned superannuation funds at the expense of workers.
Despite years of scandals, decades of underperformance and evidence of shocking misconduct uncovered by the Banking Royal Commission, this bill directly benefits for-profit superannuation providers.
Workers bargain for a single fund in the workplace where they know it is in their best interest. This ensures superannuation is paid in full and on time and that workers have the best insurance available to them and their line of work, as well as access to defined benefit schemes.
This bill threatens all of that and will only aid unscrupulous bosses and dodgy banks. The union movement supported sensible amendments put forward by Labor and the Greens and supported by Jacqui Lambie to protect workers’ rights and is disappointed the government and some crossbench senators did not support them.

Global unions condemn assaults against officials of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union, Ronny Buckley and Paul Tzimas, by unidentified individuals. The incident took place at a Melbourne construction site after the two CFMEU members responded to complaints over occupational health and safety.
The BWI general secretary, Ambet Yuson, called on the authorities to conduct a swift investigation of the incident and deliver the perpetrators to justice.
According to reports, Buckley was knocked unconscious with a piece of timber and kicked while unconscious on the ground. He was admitted to a hospital with a fractured eye socket, amongst other injuries. Meanwhile, Tzimas suffered bruises to his face and body after being punched and kicked.
A large protest took place at the site, which was shut down until further notice.

On 4 July 2019 Scott Morrison’s coalition government introduced the “Ensuring Integrity” Bill to the House of Representatives, designed to further curb the activities of trade unions. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was quick to denounce the bill, which would give ministers, employers, or any other party with a “sufficient interest” the power to intervene in the running and work of unions, disqualify people from union leadership, block union mergers and deregister unions. In short, the bill sought to go further than any other western democracy in interfering in democratic workers’ organisations, said the ACTU, which further highlighted that the bill was incompatible with ILO International Labour Organization A tripartite United Nations (UN) agency established in 1919 to promote working and living conditions. The main international body charged with developing and overseeing international labour standards.

See tripartism, ITUC Guide to international trade union rights Conventions 87 and 98. 
The government had initially tried to introduce the bill, an amendment to the 2009 Fair Work Act, in 2017 but was defeated in the Senate in 2018. 
The principle features of the bill are to provide for the disqualification of duly elected trade union officers and the de-registration of unions based on their conduct or that of their officers or members. Further, it introduces a “public interest” test to the approval of union amalgamations (contestable by “interested persons”, who could include employers, among others), notwithstanding the democratic vote of the union members concerned. The bill constitutes a clear violation of ILO International Labour Organization A tripartite United Nations (UN) agency established in 1919 to promote working and living conditions. The main international body charged with developing and overseeing international labour standards.

See tripartism, ITUC Guide to international trade union rights Convention 87 and is an unprecedented interference into the democratic operation of unions and the right of workers to choose their own representatives. 
The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on 31 July but was later rejected by the Senate at the end of November. Less than a week later, the government was back with a slightly amended version of the Ensuring Integrity Bill, with a provision requiring it to review it after two years if the bill becomes law. This new bill will be debated when Parliament resumes in 2020. 
A second piece of anti-worker legislation, the Fair Work Laws Amendment (Proper Use of Worker Benefits) Bill 2019, is currently before the Senate. This bill will limit the capacity of unions to structure and be involved in the management of “worker benefit funds” as well as limit their capacity to bargain for contributions to be made to such funds during collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
. ‘Worker benefit funds” refers to a range of funds presently operated as trusts jointly by unions and employers (or employer organisations) for the benefit of workers. The fundamental purpose of such funds is to protect workers’ entitlements, such as redundancy pay and severance pay and provide for portability of entitlements. 

In October 2019 Industrial Relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue Minister Christian Porter proposed legislative changes removing the right to negotiate for better pay from workers involved in infrastructure projects and employed on so-called “greenfield agreements”. 
Greenfield agreements are made before any worker is employed on a project and currently have a maximum four-year term, after which the workers have the right to negotiate their pay and conditions. The new legislative proposals, brought forward at the urging of big business, would mean that such agreements could run for the life of a project, which could be five to ten years without the right to negotiate a pay rise. 
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) warned that “Extending the life of greenfield agreements is a denial of the right to collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
. It serves just one purpose – to stop workers from negotiating pay rises.”

The National Roads and Motorists’ Association Limited (NRMA) harassed, intimidated and dismissed ferry skippers in Sydney after they took industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. in a dispute over a new enterprise agreement. A series of two-hour stoppages took place in March and April 2019 in protest at NMRA-owned My Fast Ferry’s failure to make any meaningful concessions despite six meetings with the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU). Ferry skippers were being paid below the industry’s collective agreement rates and were casually employed. Workers were demanding more permanent full-time positions, regular shifts and higher wages. In December 2018, the Fair Work Commission found that the skippers could be collectively owed as much as A$1 million due to underpayment. 
The situation dragged on and stoppages resumed in June, after six months of unresolved negotiations, and another cancelled meeting with the CFMMEU by the NMRA. 
The NMRA then took the CFMMEU to court seeking significant damages for “maliciously” using its logo in the campaign for a fair deal for workers, and for making false and injurious claims. The logo the union used was a combination of the NRMA’s acronym in lettering similar to its trademark with a graphic of a sinking ferry. It appeared on T-shirts, pamphlets, placards, as well as on a petition and in social media posts alongside phrases such as “NRMA, stop sinking job security”. 
On 11 September the Federal Court dismissed the proceedings and awarded costs to the union, concluding that “the NRMA has failed to establish any of its three causes of action.” 
It was calculated that the NMRA had spent more in legal costs than it would have done had it paid the workers what they were asking. 

Dozens of workers on a Queensland building site were fined 42,000 Australian dollars in July 2019 by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). They had stopped work in protest after Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) flags were removed from the worksite. The CFMMEU pointed out that rather than punishing workers for taking industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. , the government should focus on the crisis in confidence in building standards and safety. “The fines these workers face total more than A$2.75 million,” said CFMEU National Construction Secretary Dave Noonan. “Last week we saw a builder fined A$450,000 after a worker was killed on an unsafe site where the union had identified numerous risks which the builder ignored.”

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) excluded trade union representatives from a forum aimed at increasing the number of women working in the maritime industries. 
The event took place on 29 July 2019 at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour and included a key-note presentation by International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Secretary-General Kitack Lim, along with presentations by bureaucrats and employers, but no input from worker representatives. 
The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) described AMSA’s approach as completely out of step with global efforts to boost female participation in the maritime sector, which have been built on a tripartite model that brings together employers, government and workers. 
ITF Maritime Coordinator Jacqueline Smith noted: “Globally, there is consensus that tripartite cooperation is the backbone needed to successfully drive this important change in the maritime industry. Rather than support these productive efforts, the Australian maritime safety regulator appears to be running a counterproductive and deeply ideological position that actively excludes seafarer representatives.”

John Trego, a Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) delegate and health and safety representative, was sacked on 13 June 2019 by timber products manufacturer Wesbeam in Dandenong, Victoria. The union promptly lodged an application with the Federal Court, arguing that Mr Trego was subjected to unfair treatment for his role as union delegate. It started with him being denied overtime which he has previously worked regularly and built up until the employer warned him for “talking about the union too much at work”. The employer then terminated his employment. 
The judge hearing the case found that the employer’s own evidence showed “a dislike for, or hostility towards, the union and the bargaining power it brought to Wesbeam workers”. The judge also accepted the CFMMEU’S argument that Mr Trego’s dismissal would have a “chilling effect” on the union’s ability to continue to recruit and represent members on site and ordered the delegate’s full reinstatement. 

The Qantas airline sought to pressure staff into signing a hitherto unseen company-endorsed agreement in return for an A$2,000 bonus payment freely given to managers in June 2019. 
Qantas withheld the bonus for all non-management staff until they signed the new agreement. 
Staff who subsequently left or were made redundant during that time would be denied the bonus entirely.  
Qantas staff had endured pay freezes and huge staff reductions. Both the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) expressed their outrage that while the company’s financial performance had improved thanks to their work and their sacrifices, management tried to use their bonus reward as leverage instead of recognition recognition The designation by a government agency of a union as the bargaining agent for workers in a given bargaining unit, or acceptance by an employer that its employees can be collectively represented by a union. .

In March 2018 the aluminium producing company Alcoa applied to Australia’s workplace regulator, the Fair Work Commission, to terminate the collective agreement with the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) covering workers at the Kwinana, Pinjarra and Wagerup alumina refineries, the Huntley and Willowdale bauxite mines and Bunbury Port.
Companies can apply for the termination of agreements under Fair Work industrial laws. Without a workplace agreement, Alcoa employees feared they could be forced back onto the base industrial award, leading to large pay reductions and cuts to working conditions.
Despite recording substantial NET profits with the current agreement operating, Alcoa sought a range of reductions to important conditions from the outset of bargaining in December 2016 and then refused to move away from these claims. The company used the threat of termination in an attempt to intimidate the workforce into accepting new working conditions.
The workers voted to take strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike action from 8 August 2018. The strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike lasted 53 days before Alcoa finally agreed to a minor concession concerning job security. This was not considered sufficient movement by the employees who voted against the proposed agreement in October 2018. On 20 December 2018, the Fair Work Commission agreed to terminate the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) from 7 January 2019, after Alcoa argued some terms were outdated and that it needed to “run the business with flexibility and in the most efficient and productive way”. The AWU pointed out that nothing in the agreement prevented Alcoa achieving those goals as it had recorded an annual net profit of AU$1.1 billion for 2017. Meanwhile the cancellation of the EBA created unacceptable uncertainty for the workers.
In January 2019 the AWU lodged an appeal against the decision to terminate the agreement; the appeal was heard on 25 January 2019. The Full Bench has reserved its decision.

In July 2018 property giant Geocon admitted to contravening the Fair Work Act by refusing union officials entry to a luxury apartment block building site in Canberra. In March 2018, it had refused to let two Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) officials reach the part of the site where workers were located. In December the Federal Circuit Court in Canberra handed down a penalty of AU$21,600 for breaking the right-of-entry laws. As CFMEU National Construction Secretary Dave Noonan pointed out “These laws are there to enable union officials to ensure that safety is being taken seriously on building sites. When these laws are broken, lives are put at risk.”

A forklift truck driver hired through the ADECCO employment agency was dismissed from his job at Amazon in October 2018. He had been told they were pleased with his work, and had been asking for extra hours. However, he had also been asked not to wear a union cap and lanyard, after becoming the first worker at the distribution centre to join the union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA). Adecco representatives also objected to union organisers distributing promotional union material to workers. He got into a dispute with Adecco after his repeated requests for extra hours were refused. Then, after meeting a union official in the lunch room at the distribution centre on 5 October, when a member of management happened to be in the same room, he was dismissed by Adecco on 9 October.
The SDA supported the member to file a general protection case with the Fair Work Commission for unlawful dismissal. A preliminary hearing was held on 29 November. The case was expected to head to federal court in early 2019.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) threatened to fine construction workers up to AU$42,000 for participating in the Change the Rules political protests on 23 October 2018 calling for more secure jobs and better pay. The ABCC sent an email around the country a week ahead of the protests, insisting that workers must have the written permission of their employers to take part. The Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union (CFMMEU) described the move as a blatant attempt to frighten workers off attending the political protest.
On the eve of the protests, the Chinese-owned construction giant the John Holland Group followed the ABCC’s lead and sent an email to its subcontractors, warning that workers attending the rallies in Adelaide might be participating in “unprotected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. ” that may lead to “investigation by the Australian Building and Construction Commission”. The email urged subcontractors to “keep records” on workers attending the rally.
Further to the ABCC’s threats, the Victorian Trades Hall Council sought expert legal advice. Lawyers confirmed that employees have the right to participate in lawful activities organised by their union, and are entitled to request annual leave to attend the rally. Refusing a leave request could amount to adverse action under the Fair Work Act.

In July 2018 it was reported that Esso Australia was about to renew an application to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), the federal industrial tribunal, to terminate enterprise agreements covering 250 workers in its off-shore Bass Strait gas operations in southeastern Victoria. As in the Longford case that began in 2017, workers would be forced onto industrial awards with inferior working conditions, including a two-thirds reduction in pay. The workers are members of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU).
This was Esso’s latest move in a protracted dispute over new enterprise bargaining agreements. The company has consistently sought to tear up longstanding working conditions and drastically intensify work processes to cut costs.

Negotiations between rail freight company Aurizon and the Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) over a new enterprise agreement for workers at Aurizon’s control room in the central Queensland regional city of Rockhampton broke down at the beginning of July 2018. The workers had spent nine months trying to negotiate a new agreement, but Aurizon persisted with its demands for further cuts to wages and conditions to “better align to competitors and industry”. Management gave the workers until Monday 9 July to vote on a package that included annual pay rises of two per cent for four years – well below cost-of-living rises.
RTBU authorised limited 24-hour stoppages beginning on 5 July, as workers’ anger mounted. Unions gave Aurizon management seven days’ notice of their action, and they responded by walking away from negotiations. RTBU Queensland Branch Secretary Owen Doogan said unions believed Aurizon management was deliberately trying to sabotage a negotiated outcome, and to use Australia’s coal supply chain as leverage, in its strategy to attack the wages and conditions of its workers.

By June 2018, 230 striking maintenance workers employed by Esso maintenance subcontractor UGL in Gippsland, Victoria (Australia), had been out of work for over a year. The problems began when Esso awarded a five-year maintenance contract to engineering firm UGL covering the Longford gas processing site in Victoria, in June 2017. UGL, owned by Spanish transnational CIMIC, immediately sacked the entire maintenance workforce of 230 workers and then invited them to reapply for their jobs, with wage and entitlement cuts of 30 to 50 per cent, as well as new rosters that would keep them away from their families for long periods. The workers refused to sign the unilaterally imposed enterprise agreement, and remained sacked as a result.

At protests to mark the first anniversary of their dispute, the workers, most of them members of AMWU (Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union), AWU (Australian Workers’ Union) and ETU (Electrical Trades Union), and their supporters called for changes to Australia’s Fair Work Act that currently allows companies to deploy such tactics to drive down wages. The practice has become increasingly widespread and in the preceding two months, thousands of workers had taken part in nationwide rallies organised by the Australian trade union movement demanding that the government make it illegal.
Four Australian union representatives travelled to Dallas, Texas, in June to attend the global shareholders’ meeting of Esso Australia’s parent company ExxonMobil. Three were barred from entering and the fourth, Steve Soloman, was able to attend but prevented from speaking. He had planned to challenge the company over the hundreds of millions of dollars it has spent on union-busting efforts.
Esso and UGL are also in the firing line for collectively paying no tax on over AU$30 billion of revenue over the last three years (AU$24.8 billion from Exxon and AU$5.6 billion) in Australia.

US-based tissue and personal care giant Kimberly Clark dragged out negotiations at its Millicent mill in South Australia with constant threats of possible closures and job losses. The Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union (CFMMEU) had been attempting to bargain a new collective agreement with management at the Millicent mill since 2014. The long delays meant a four-year stagnation of wages, and therefore a pay cut in real terms, given cost-of-living increases.
The union became frustrated at the lack of progress and the continual threat of closures, despite its proposals for significant long-term saving measures. In June 2018, CFMMEU launched a series of rolling strikes to push for a modest wage increase and improved redundancy provisions in case the mill did shut. The dispute continued to drag on.

After dragging out its negotiations with the Maritime Workers Union (MUA) for two and a half years, Qube Logistics then reneged on a promise to restore former rosters at Melbourne’s Webb Dock. In 2015, the workers and MUA had a temporary cost-cutting deal forced on them which ended a roster system consisting of seven weeks’ work and one week off. In March 2018, however, Qube Logistics applied to the Fair Work industrial relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue courts to have the enterprise agreement with the union unilaterally terminated, which would cut workers’ wages by up to 56 per cent. In the meantime, workloads had steadily increased and workers were being forced to work excessive 12-hour shifts.
The workers called a two-day strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike on 17 and 18 March 2018 to which the company responded by flying in strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike -breakers by helicopter to unload a ship.

In the construction sector, industry specific laws further confine the scope of permitted topics for collective agreements. This is because building companies become ineligible to perform work funded by the government if they make collective agreements dealing with particular matters. Those matters include limits on the number of hours that can be worked in a day, requiring the hiring of a minimum ratio of apprentices, safe staffing levels and requirements about pay parity for indirect/agency workers.

On 15 February 2018 a lawful strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike by workers at a paper products factory was suspended for ten days. Our national laws allow this to occur where strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike action has been protracted, if the Fair Work Commission considers (among other things) that the suspending the action will assist the bargaining. In this case the strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike had only been going for 21 working days. The suspension order has been stayed pending an appeal.

On 9 February 2018 a lawful strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike in the railway sector was cancelled by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) on the basis of its economic impact, its impact on passengers and the increased road congestion it would cause. Under the law the FWC can suspend or terminate protected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. if it deems that it endangers the life, safety, health or welfare of part of the population, or causes significant damage to the Australian economy – or if the commission decides that bargaining representatives would benefit from a cooling-off period during negotiations. The head of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, said the decision showed Australia’s industrial relation laws were “stacked in favour of the employers. […] Rail workers followed every single rule and law, and still the minister of the day can get an order to cancel bans on working excessive overtime.” The national secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, Bob Nanva, agreed with McManus, saying the decision “marks the death of the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike in Australia. […] Australia already has some of the most restrictive industrial laws in the world when it comes to the rights of workers to withhold their labour. The Fair Work Commission has said workers cannot strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike even when they have complied with these restrictive laws.”
In Australia, limitations on the categories of workers who can maintain a strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike extends far beyond the “essential services essential services Services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population. Can include the hospital sector, electricity and water supply services, and air traffic control. Strikes can be restricted or even prohibited in essential services.

See Guide to the ITUC international trade union rights framework
” restrictions as understood by the ILO International Labour Organization A tripartite United Nations (UN) agency established in 1919 to promote working and living conditions. The main international body charged with developing and overseeing international labour standards.

See tripartism, ITUC Guide to international trade union rights supervisory bodies. For example, on 9 February 2018 a lawful train strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike was cancelled by the Fair Work Commission on the basis of its economic impact, its impact on passengers and the increased road congestion it would cause.

Luke Hilakari, secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, was served with legal documents at his family home on 9 December 2017.
He was one of the leaders at a two-week picket line at the Port of Melbourne, blockading millions of dollars of pre-Christmas cargo on the Melbourne waterfront, which had received a mass show of support from several unions. The legal action against him was brought by international stevedore Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT), which had previously won orders in the state’s Supreme Court for the maritime union to lift the picket line.
The dispute was triggered by VICT’s decision to stop giving casual shifts to a union member there. The company claimed a security audit found him ineligible to work at the waterfront due to a previous criminal conviction, but union officials believe he was singled out because he had been involved in a drive among co-workers to join the maritime union.
Following the summons served on Mr Hilakari, the union noted that it was the first time that a prominent leader had been individually targeted. Mr Hilakari called on VICT to explain how it discovered his private address and why it served him at home on a Saturday afternoon rather than at his office at Trades Hall.

On 6 December 2017 a High Court ruling in a case between Esso Australia and the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) further limited the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike and weakened unions’ bargaining position.
Under the Australian Fair Work Act, a union may not organise protected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. if it contravenes an order of the Fair Work Commission (FWC). The High Court ruled that the disentitlement to organise industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. continues to apply for the remainder of the period of enterprise bargaining; the cessation of operation of the FWC order does not affect this. The failure or inability to take or maintain industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. will significantly weaken the unions’ bargaining power.
In a statement following the ruling, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) noted that the High Court had described industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. as a “privilege”. Yet under international law the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike is recognised as a fundamental human right. ACTU Secretary Sally McManus noted the increasing restrictions on the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike in Australia, saying, “There are currently a myriad of complex and onerous rules restricting industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. to a very limited window with severe penalties should not all these rules and red tape be complied with.”

The Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) was denied entry to the workplace following the death of a 56-year-old contractor on 29 November 2017.

Carl Delaney, a member of the CFMEU, was working in a confined spaced installing insulation inside a cryogenic tank at the INPEX energy company’s site in the Northern Territory (NT) when he died. Circumstances surrounding the death were initially unclear. When the union arrived at the project, they were initially denied entry by contractor JKC for more than two hours.

The site was examined shortly after the accident, however, by the Northern Territory WorkSafe inspector Rebecca Trimble. It emerged that Carl Delaney fell into the insulation dust and disappeared below the surface. He was pulled from the dust and treated by the on-site INPEX medical team while St John Ambulance was called. However, by the time they arrived, Mr Delaney had died.
The State Secretary for the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) in Queensland and NT, Peter Ong, said the project had been plagued by a culture of fear and intimidation against workers who spoke out against safety issues during the past four years. The ETU believed industrial manslaughter legislation may be the only way to force companies such as INPEX, JKC and their contractors to fulfil their safety obligations to workers and prevent further tragedies occurring. The CFMEU also argued for the changes to the law after the death of its member.

Unilever sought to end a lengthy dispute over a workplace agreement at Streets Ice Cream in August 2017 by applying to the Fair Work Commission to terminate the existing agreement and cut wages by 46 per cent.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) described the company’s tactics as typical – management proposed a new agreement, with such harsh conditions that Streets’ workers inevitably overwhelmingly voted against it. In response, rather than continuing to negotiate, the company applied to have the independent umpire drastically reduce wages and working conditions, notably annual, personal, parental and compassionate leave, limits on overtime, redundancy conditions, and protection against the use of contract labour. ACTU Secretary Sally McManus described the move as “industrial blackmail. Unilever and Streets are forcing workers to choose between an agreement they don’t want and a 46 per cent cut in wages, with crippling cuts to conditions.”

In October the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) launched a boycott boycott A collective refusal to buy or use the goods or services of an employer to express disapproval with its practices. Primary boycotts are used to put direct pressure on an employer, while a secondary boycott involves the refusal to deal with a neutral employer with the view of dissuading it from patronising the target employer. of Streets Ice Cream in support of the 100 plus workers at the company’s Minto factory in Sydney.

The pressure of the boycott boycott A collective refusal to buy or use the goods or services of an employer to express disapproval with its practices. Primary boycotts are used to put direct pressure on an employer, while a secondary boycott involves the refusal to deal with a neutral employer with the view of dissuading it from patronising the target employer. worked. The dispute ended on 22 November after employees forged an agreement with the organisation that will see them receive a five per cent wage increase over three years, be able to maintain their current working conditions and rosters and have 39 new flexible part-time jobs added to the company.

By 27 January 2018 miners at Glencore’s Oaky North mine had been locked out for 200 days.

The dispute began in May after workers at the mine rejected Glencore’s proposed workplace agreement, and went on strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike in protest. The proposed agreement would have undermined workers’ rights, notably by removing access to workplace representation in some cases, and allowing the company to unilaterally change rosters.

On 23 July 2017 the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) reported that the workers had called off their industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. . The union proposed a two-year rollover of the existing agreement with a zero per cent pay increase. However, when the miners turned up for work, they found they had been locked out. The CFMEU believe Glencore’s aim was to replace the permanent workforce with casual contractors.

Further negotiations and stalemates followed. Meanwhile, the workers found themselves the subject of surveillance by Glencore’s private security guards. A case was filed before the Fair Work Commission, and evidence was submitted showing that Glencore’s security company was briefed to monitor and record specific activities by union members, including specific instructions such as ensuring the use of “long lens camera etc. for photos of piquet (picket). We need to be able to ID individuals”.
At the end of October 2017, the Fair Work Commission ordered the company to cease its surveillance of Oaky North mine workers because it was “outside the scope of what would be reasonable” and “undermines collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
and freedom of association freedom of association The right to form and join the trade union of one’s choosing as well as the right of unions to operate freely and carry out their activities without undue interference.

See Guide to the ITUC international trade union rights framework ”. The Commission also ordered Glencore to withdraw a direction to staff regarding the wearing of union clothing at the mine, and to drop disciplinary action against workers.
On 2 February 2018 Glencore applied to the Fair Work Commission to terminate the current enterprise agreement at the Oaky North Mine, while the lockout lockout A form of industrial action whereby an employer refuses work to its employees or temporarily shuts down operations. continued.

On 24 October the Australian Federal Police, under the direction of the newly established Registered Organisations Commission (ROC), raided the offices of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) in both Sydney and Melbourne.

The raids were purportedly to uncover documentation relating to allegations that the union gave financial support to a progressive community group “GetUp!” along with political candidates more than a decade ago. Sally McManus, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), described the raids as “an outrageous abuse of power”.
It emerged that media outlets had been given advance warning of the raids by the government, presumably to maximise publicity. After initial denials, the senior media adviser to the Office of Workplace Relations Minister Michaelia Cash admitted that he had leaked the information to the media.
The ROC Commissioner, Mark Bielecki, told the Senate on 25 October that the raid was necessary because the AWU had “expressly declined” to provide all the documents requested of them in August. Yet the AWU had stated that the ROC had never requested documents from it before the police raid on their offices. In another bizarre twist Mr Bielecki quickly retracted his claim that the AWU had refused to hand over the documents. In fact, the documents had already been provided to the Trade Union Royal Commission some years ago, and showed that the union had fully supported and endorsed the donations to GetUp! The raids appeared to be totally unjustified and a waste of police resources. The unions believe they were politically motivated.

The circumstances surrounding the termination of Henk Doevendans, as reported in High Court case [2014] HCA 41, highlight the limits of protections for workers participating in lawful strikes and otherwise supporting, participating in or and advancing the views and lawful activities of their union.
Mr Dovenans was a union member employed at a coal mine operated by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance. A lawful strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike occurred and involved among other things a protest outside the mine. Mr Dovenans participated in the protest. A number of protesters held signs at the protest, such as “This is a community not a camp”, “Families together, families forever” and “BMA Charter values profits before people”. Mr Doevendans held a sign that said “Scabs no principles no guts”. It appears that particular sign was displayed when non-striking workers entered or left the site. He was then dismissed. He argued that his dismissal was unlawful because he was dismissed because of lawful union activity. The employer said he was not dismissed “because” he participated in the union action, but because of how he participated in the union action. It argued that the only reason he was dismissed was because the sign he held during the union action was offensive and in breach of the company code of practice, and that this was not legally the same as dismissing a person because of their lawful industrial activity. The High Court agreed with the employer.

Unions in Australia observe with concern a narrowing of the scope of permitted bargaining matters and its impact on the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike . In a decision of 27 September 2017 ([2017] FWC 4951), the Fair Work Commission (FWC) declared that the clause put forward by United Voice in its negotiation with Castlemaine Perkins Pty Ltd was outside of the scope of “permitted content”.
Bargaining between the union and the company is currently underway and commenced in mid-2017. After several meetings between the parties, the union filed for a protected action ballot order, the first necessary step to taking protected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. , which in recent years has become overly prescriptive and legalistic.
Under the current regime, the key requirement the union must meet for the order to be granted is demonstration that it “is and had been genuinely trying to reach agreement”. This phrase has become overly technical and legalistic, divorced from any practical reality of what it means to bargain “in good faith”.
Often the debate about whether a union party is genuinely trying to reach agreement is conflated with whether that party is seeking to advance claims for “non-permitted” content. The most common debate is around content which seeks to place limitation or restriction on the engagement of third party labour (e.g., agency workers).
Such was the case in the current matter, wherein the union applied for a protected action ballot order of workers to be covered by the relevant agreement. In the course of bargaining, the union tabled a clause which sought to place limitations and restrictions on engagement of labour hired to perform work under the agreement. The Fair Work Commission determined that the clause fell beyond the scope of what is considered to be “permitted content” and this in turn led to the conclusion that the union was not genuinely trying to reach agreement. It is concerning that such a conclusion can be reached under current laws, in isolation of the remainder of the conduct of the parties in bargaining.

On 12 September 2017 Nigel Hadgkiss, the head of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), admitted that he had been in contravention of the Fair Work Act, by publishing incorrect information about right of entry rules.

For two years, multiple ABCC publications on right of entry laws incorrectly asserted that union officials had to comply with the employer’s wishes on the location of meetings. This led employers to believe they were able to dictate where meetings could be held. In fact, under right of entry rules in the Fair Work Act, lunchrooms are to be the default location for union officials to conduct meetings with workers. The law was introduced in 2014 to protect workers who might be intimidated by being forced to hold discussions with their union representative in clear view of their employer.
The issue of the false information was brought to Mr Hadgkiss’ attention by his staff. According to internal ABCC emails, however, Mr Hadgkiss had insisted that corrections to ABCC publications were to be “canned” because the incoming coalition government had indicated that it would reverse the laws. In the emails Nigel Hadgkiss said he was extremely comfortable “handling” the matter in Senate Estimates Committee (that looks at government spending) or the media.

His situation became increasingly uncomfortable, however, and Mr Hadgkiss was forced to resign.

On 1 September 2017 the Federal Court found that management of a subsidiary of the Boral construction company, the concrete placers De Martin and Gasparini, acted illegally in threatening to make its workers redundant and had contravened the Fair Work Act.
In late June, De Martin and Gasparini threatened more than 100 workers with redundancy before 31 August, after they voted down changes to their enterprise agreement that would remove key conditions and pave the way for the casualisation casualisation The practice of increasing the flexibility of the workforce by replacing permanent, full-time workers with workers on temporary, irregular contracts. of their workforce.
The changes would have taken away the employees’ right to four-day weekends six times a year on public holidays – an important condition for managing fatigue in an industry characterised by long hours and physical labour. They would also have lifted restrictions on the use of contract labour, reducing the security of employment for construction workers.

The company claimed that the workers agreement was not compliant with the Building Code. The judge found that the statements made by De Martin and Gasparini managers to its workforce were intimidatory, threatening and intended to terminate the workforce.

The National Construction Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Dave Noonan, said, “Our members were put under enormous pressure as a result of the company’s actions. Their job security was threatened, causing them stress, anxiety and fear.... At the heart of this is Malcolm Turnbull’s Building Code. It’s unfair, it’s unnecessary and it’s causing serious disruption to the industry.”

On 30 August 2017 the Fair Work Commission approved the request by Murdoch University to cancel a workplace agreement that covered 3,000 staff part way through bargaining. The University had argued that the agreement affected its financial and operational performance.
In granting Murdoch’s application to terminate the current agreement, the Commissioner acknowledged that the cancellation would, "change the context of bargaining, more to Murdoch’s favour”. Failure to reach a new agreement – lengthy negotiations had repeatedly broken down – would mean workers would have their pay and conditions reduced to the basic standards set out in the general agreement, or award, covering their sector.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) noted the increasing use of this tactic, used to bypass the normal collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
process. In the preceding three years over 850 agreements had been terminated impacting approximately 120,000 workers.
In a 2017 Senate Inquiry into corporate avoidance of the Fair Work Act, particular consideration was given to the termination of agreements. The majority report of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee recommended amending the Fair Work Act to prevent the Fair Work Commission from terminating an agreement where workers would be worse off as a result of the termination.

AB Oxford Cold Storage Co Pty Ltd, which describes itself as Australia’s largest privately owned cold storage operator, seeks to avoid direct responsibility for negotiating collective agreements with its workforce by using multiple labour-hire agencies rather than employing workers directly.

There are more than 400 workers at its Laverton North site in Victoria, but fewer than 30 are directly employed by AB Oxford under the terms of the enterprise agreement negotiated by the National Union of Workers (NUW). In 2017, NUW members working at the site were employed by at least six distinct employing entities.

In a submission to the Senate Education and Employment Committee, the NUW explained that every few years their members are informed that their employment agency is “wrapping up” and that they may continue their employment at AB Oxford if they sign up with a new agency – almost always operated by the same sole director as the previous agency. Before offering redeployment, however, a non-union enterprise agreement has been “negotiated” with a small number of employees (usually fewer than four). Workers are thereby coerced into accepting conditions they are not able to negotiate, and the agencies prevent their employees from ever having an opportunity to bargain collectively.

In June 2017 the Federal Court granted an interim injunction injunction A court order prohibiting or preventing a certain course of action, such as calling or continuing with a strike. against Oxford Cold Storage to stop it from transferring workers to a new labour-hire company to avoid negotiating a fresh enterprise agreement. The Victoria branch of NUW said it knew of only one similar case, the Australian waterfront dispute of 1998 when Patrick Stevedores sacked and locked out its workforce and set up new companies to employ a non-unionised workforce.

The Appin Colliery in New South Wales dismissed Dave McLachlan on 19 April 2017 for taking part in a protest on 7 March in which miners stripped to their underwear in protest at the lack of work clothes. McLachlan, a delegate for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) was first suspended pending investigation, then dismissed for “unprotected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. ” and “bringing the company into disrepute”, after pictures of the protest were posted online.

The protest involved more than 50 miners who arrived for work at South32’s Appin Colliery on 7 March 2017 wearing their helmets, boots, jackets – and underpants. After ten minutes, they put their old, dirty clothes back on and returned to work. The protest was a humorous attempt to highlight the fact that South32 had for a year failed to provide new work clothes or a laundry service, both of which had been a condition of their enterprise agreement for many years. Dave McLachlan, who had worked at the mine for 17 years and had an unblemished record, was targeted because he arranged the “undies protest”.
A widely supported “Save Dave” campaign was launched by the CFMEU and Mr McLachlan was reinstated after the Fair Work Commission ruled on 10 November 2017 that his dismissal was “harsh, unjust and unreasonable”.

In March 2017 it emerged that the labour hire firm MADEC, the largest user of Australia’s Seasonal Workers Program, had pressured migrant workers to quit the National Union of Workers (NUW). If they did not, they were told they would be denied future employment.
The workers had been brought from Vanuatu on special visas to pick tomatoes in the giant greenhouses run by Perfection Fresh. They decided to join the union after they discovered that their pay cheques were drastically reduced by unexpected deductions for transport, accommodation, etc. One worker said his salary of AUD 800 a week had shrunk to just 500 after deductions.
When MADEC discovered that the workers had decided to organise, it pressured them into leaving the union, warning them that they would no longer be hired under the Seasonal Workers Program otherwise. The hire company even distributed a pro-forma resignation form to 145 workers that they were required to fill in and hand to the union, in clear breach of their freedom of association freedom of association The right to form and join the trade union of one’s choosing as well as the right of unions to operate freely and carry out their activities without undue interference.

See Guide to the ITUC international trade union rights framework rights. This action was also against the rules of the Seasonal Workers Program, supposedly designed to protect migrant workers from exploitation. The case was taken to the Federal Court and new legislation has been proposed to boost the power of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

In mid-February 2017 members of the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) employed by Fletcher Insulation, a glass wool manufacturer, began a work stoppage in protest at the company’s application to terminate their collective agreement and its blatantly unacceptable proposals for a new agreement.

The company’s offer included no pay rise for four years, the extension of the working week by three hours, and the removal of minimum staffing levels, a clear safety concern. The company also intended to make unlimited use of casual workers and drastically reduce redundancy provisions.
The previous collective agreement had expired, but in law should have remained in place until a new agreement came into force. The workers saw no reason for the company’s proposals, given that it was profitable and its workers had set new productivity levels.

The strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike lasted 96 days, throughout which management at the Dandenong plant maintained its threat to force all employees back onto an agreement that would halve their pay and remove almost all their entitlements. It ended in victory for the AWU members, however, and the 90 glass wool workers returned to work on 1 June after winning key improvements in their working conditions.

On 2 February 2017, the CFMEU were awarded costs by the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory, in relation to an unlawful search and seizure operation carried out on the union’s Canberra office by the Australian Federal Police in August 2015.

Early on the morning of Wednesday 21 December a car drove up outside the CFMEU’s Melbourne headquarters, a man got out, fired several shots, then drove away, said witnesses. A glass door and several windows were shattered but, as the attack took place at 3 a.m., no one was in the building and no one got hurt. The CFMEU did not know who the attacker could have been, noting that it had many potential enemies. The police were investigating the incident.

The Secretary of the Queensland branch of the CFMEU, Michael Ravbar, faced repeated attempts by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) to take away his Right of Entry permit (which allows union officials to enter premises to exercise tasks related to the Work Health and Safety Act). The first attempt came in 2014 when the union applied for the permit. The government agency Fair Work Building and Construction (FWBC) opposed the decision, but the permit was granted. FWBC appealed and lost. Finally, on 13 December 2016, the Full Court of the Federal Court dismissed an ABCC submission to take away Mr. Ravbar’s Right of Entry.

The head of FWBC at the time it opposed the original granting of the permit was Nigel Hadgkiss. He later became head of the ABCC, when it sought to get the permit withdrawn. As the CFMEU commented, “Mr. Hadgkiss has shown again that he does not accept the legitimacy of unions in the industry.”

At the end of November, Australia’s coalition government passed the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill, re-establishing a watchdog that had been replaced in 2012 under the Labor government. The bill was designed to limit the power of “militant” unions, amid claims that construction unions were driving up house prices through strikes and over-generous pay deals. A report by the think tank “Australia Institute” found no link between construction wages and rising house prices, however. It pointed out that labour costs account for only about 10 per cent of housing prices and that average earnings in the construction industry had grown less than the national average over the last five years. The ACTU noted that the new ABCC will reduce job security for workers, reduce the employment of apprentices, ban limits on hiring casual labour and obstruct employees seeking union help on safety issues. The construction union, the CFMEU, further warned that the ABCC would discriminate against one group of workers by imposing harsh penalties that do not apply to the rest of the workforce. The bill was adopted even after a Royal Commission rejected the idea of creating industry-specific legal restrictions and different penalties that apply to just one industry.

Those penalties are fairly steep. Penalties for unlawful industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. or supposed coercion are up to AUD 36,000 for individual workers and AUD 180,000 for trade unions, and can apply to any other workers or supporters who join pickets. The agency’s powers go beyond building sites to cover workers involved in off-site prefabrication, transport, supply and offshore oil and gas platforms. It also has the power to prosecute workers and unions even after they have settled or abandoned a dispute with an employer, and to pursue legal costs and uncapped compensation—potentially millions of dollars—for damage allegedly suffered by a company.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) continued to face what its national secretary Dave Noonan has described as “political harassment”.

On 6 December 2015 the head of the Victoria branch of the CFMEU, John Setka, and his deputy, Shaun Reardon, were charged with blackmail against the concrete company Boral. Instead of going to the CFMEU offices, however, police chose to pull Mr. Setka over while he was driving with his family and two young children on a Sunday in North Melbourne before taking him to police headquarters to be charged. Mr. Reardon was also arrested in front of his family.

It was the latest in a string of legal cases brought against the union. The blackmail charges related to comments made in a meeting in April 2013 with Boral bosses concerning the union’s long running dispute with development company Grocon. If found guilty, the pair could face up to 15 years in prison. As their barrister pointed out, however, their “offence” was to have threatened secondary picketing picketing Demonstration or patrolling outside a workplace to publicise the existence of an industrial dispute or a strike, and to persuade other workers not to enter the establishment or discourage consumers from patronising the employer. Secondary picketing involves picketing of a neutral establishment with a view to putting indirect pressure on the target employer. within the context of their industrial dispute industrial dispute A conflict between workers and employers concerning conditions of work or terms of employment. May result in industrial action. , which is explicitly decriminalised under the Competition and Consumer Act.

In October 2016 both men were re-elected unopposed to their posts as Victoria branch secretary and deputy secretary. At the time of writing the court case was ongoing.

On 1 August 2016 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission carried out a search of the CFMEU headquarters seeking documents in relation to the Competition and Consumer Act. The search warrant seemed to have been granted following a case study conducted by the Heydon Royal Commission. As the union pointed out, however, the Royal Commission had been unable to conclude that the CFMEU had breached the Competition and Consumer Act. The CFMEU cooperated with providing documents and rejected any allegation that it had breached the Competition and Consumer Act through the negotiation of enterprise bargaining agreements for its members under the Fair Work Act.

In July 2016, Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) sacked 55 union machine maintenance workers at its Melbourne brewery, ahead of the acquisition of CUB’s parent company SABMiller by AB InBev. The 55 workers were all members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU). They were told their jobs would be outsourced to a new contractor but they could return to work as employees of the subcontractor – with a 65% pay cut. The workers refused, sparking a long-running dispute and a boycott boycott A collective refusal to buy or use the goods or services of an employer to express disapproval with its practices. Primary boycotts are used to put direct pressure on an employer, while a secondary boycott involves the refusal to deal with a neutral employer with the view of dissuading it from patronising the target employer. of the company’s products.

A CUB spokeswoman was quoted as saying, “We believe this dispute is about unions wanting to enforce their power over an external company and the wages being offered.”

The union campaign lasted six months and received widespread support, including from global unions. The boycott boycott A collective refusal to buy or use the goods or services of an employer to express disapproval with its practices. Primary boycotts are used to put direct pressure on an employer, while a secondary boycott involves the refusal to deal with a neutral employer with the view of dissuading it from patronising the target employer. of the company’s products was also well supported. Finally, on 6 December unions and management concluded an agreement providing for the following: all workers who wished to return to work be allowed to do so under their original union pay and conditions; any new contractor will have to meet the existing conditions; and there would be no involuntary redundancies.

In the middle of the night on 13 January 2016, 30 security guards boarded the Alcoa ship “MV Portland” to remove five crew members, all Australian and all members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). They then escorted foreign seafarers on to the ship that immediately left for Singapore. The MUA had been in dispute with the ship owner who wanted to make the crew redundant after sailing the Portland cargo ship to Singapore for scrap.
The MV Portland had been used to transport minerals and, under Australian laws, had to have an Australian flag and crew, but had been granted a temporary licence by the government to use a foreign crew. Alcoa had already been using a replacement ship to cover the route used by the MV Portland, and the MUA believed the company was trying to use the replacement ship to undermine the rights and conditions of Australian workers.

Police arrested ten truck drivers and Transport Workers Union (TWU) activists on 17 November 2015 during a demonstration at a Coles store in Parramatta. The protest was one of several rallies held around Australia ahead of parent company Wesfarmers annual general meeting to highlight the 330 deaths in truck-related crashes each year because of the pressure by wealthy retailers.
The TWU protested that Coles’ low cost contracts were forcing truck drivers to speed and to drive long hours with over-loaded vehicles. The TWU wanted to convince Wesfarmers shareholders to demand that Coles take action to stop the deaths in truck crashes.

On 6 August Hutchison Ports Australia sacked 97 workers in Sydney and Brisbane
via an email sent at midnight. Some 40 per cent of Hutchison Ports Australia’s workforce of 224 received the overnight termination notices, 57 in Sydney and 40 in Brisbane, Mr. Keating of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) said. The workers were told they would be paid until 16 August but need not show up for work again.

By the following afternoon some 200 of them and their supporters were protesting at the entrance to the company’s container terminal on Foreshore Drive Port Botany, as hired guards blocked the security gates and police kept watch.
Earlier in the week the MUA had notified a dispute to the Fair Work Commission on the grounds that the company had breached the enterprise bargaining agreement by not consulting with the union over workplace changes and not providing information to support its actions. The union said it would accept genuine redundancies, but the company was not struggling and had contracts that “without question sustained the viability of 224 workers”. Hutchison Ports had instead subcontracted half its work out to another stevedoring company.
Mr Keating said elected workplace representatives had been targeted for redundancy, including “the whole safety committee”. Ross Pettett, an elected health and safety representative who was among the recipients of the midnight email, said it was clear that “they have not wanted to work with the union at all.”

In July 2015 Johnny Lomax, an organiser for the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) was arrested on allegations of intimidating and blackmailing a company over the signing of an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA). The Australian Federal Police (AFP) alleged that this resulted in financial loss for the company since it has to pay its workers 26 Australian dollars (18 USD) an hour, when it claims it could have paid as low as 17 Australian dollars (12 USD). However the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Director of Public Prosecutions decided it would not offer any evidence against Lomax when his case came up in court on 19 October 2015. The CFMEU welcomed that decision, noting that the union organiser had simply been doing his job, negotiating for higher wages.

His was not the only case. In mid-2015 the Trade Union Royal Commission Police brought charges against a CFMEU Queensland official Andrew Sutherland over an incident in November 2012. In March 2016 the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions decided not to pursue charges, given the lack of evidence to back them up. Charges were also brought against another Queensland organiser Justin Steele for alleged assault against a developer in May 2015, and then dropped. In fact it transpired that the developer wanted to stop him taking photographs of unsafe practices.
Similarly, charges were brought, then dropped, against the CFMEU’s Australian Capital Territory (ACT) secretary, Dean Hall, while a not guilty verdict was delivered in the case of the New South Wales official Michael Greenfield.
The CFMEU’s Construction National Secretary Dave Noonan noted that “it was obvious from the outset that there were very spurious grounds for the charges laid...These actions seem to be designed to create a storm of negative publicity for the union.”

All workers in Australia can join unions subject to their eligibility and union coverage rules. However, not all workers in Australia can bargain collectively and take strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike action. An important example is independent contractors. These are workers who in most cases are really employees – that is, they do not operate truly independently and are dependent upon one principal for work.
Because they are not “employees”, they are denied a number of rights and entitlements under the Fair Work Act. The most important are that they cannot work together to secure a collective agreement and they cannot withhold their labour.
Under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA), independent contractors can engage in collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
if they are granted an exemption from the terms of the CCA from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The reason that an exemption must be granted is that in the eyes of the law independent contractors are seen to be on an equal commercial footing as those that they are contracting with. In many cases this is not illustrative of the true situation. For example, even where an independent contractor truly is independent, they are, when compared to a large national or multinational company, at a disadvantage. The ACCC will allow independent contractors to bargain collectively where it is in the public interest to do so.
This situation is far from ideal. As a minimum these workers should have the same access to the Fair Work Act provisions as employees. In many cases their labour is the only thing independent contractors have to offer. If they are offering up their labour, they should receive the minimum legislated and award derived entitlements to employees.

The obligation under the Fair Work Act to provide notice of protected industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. is intended to enable businesses to secure replacement labour and/or make other arrangements to minimise the effect of strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike action. Employers typically use casual employees, labour, hire workers or employees working voluntary overtime to replace those on strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike where it is necessary to continue operations.

In the case of APESMA v Peabody Energy Australia Coal Pty Ltd [2015] FWCFB 1451 (3 March 2015), the company initially refused to negotiate an agreement, preferring that the employees remain on their individual contracts. The union obtained a majority support determination to force the company to negotiate an agreement. However, after more than ten fruitless meetings, the negotiations came to a halt, prompting the union to apply for bargaining orders on the basis that Peabody was engaging in “surface bargaining”. On appeal, the Fair Work Commission held that the company’s refusal to meet for further discussions after the union put a “substantially revised proposal” to it constituted a breach of the good faith obligations. The Bench ordered Peabody to meet with the union and give it “a genuine proposal which includes the matters that it may be prepared to accept in an enterprise agreement”.

In the recent decision of Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union v Collinsville Coal Operations Pty Limited [2014] FWCFB 7940 the Fair Work Commission considered, among other things, whether an employer had avoided its bargaining obligations by attempting to exclude the union from negotiations for a new agreement.
The employer went to great lengths to avoid bargaining with the union by closing the mine for three months (to avoid certain transfer provisions in the Fair Work Act), hiring a small number of employees (21 from a required total of over 400) who were thought to be non-members, and negotiating an agreement directly with the employees and excluding the union. The employer essentially forced the employees to relinquish their rights to be represented by the union by having them appoint themselves as their own representatives for the bargaining.
Ultimately the Fair Work Commission found that the union had been a representative of at least one employee for a short period of time and allowed the union to provide the Fair Work Commission with information that it had about the agreement and the bargaining process. While the union had a right to be heard in the final stages of the agreement approval process, it was effectively denied the right to represent its members during the agreement negotiations and was denied the ability to ensure that the terms and conditions applying to its members at that particular mine and in the industry in general were upheld.

A machinery operator and member of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) was dismissed by the mining company BHP Coal based in Queensland after management concluded an investigation which found that he had on at least four occasions held up a sign marked “No principles, SCABS, No guts” beside the entrance road to the mine during a seven-day protected strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike . The worker was the CFMEU lodge vice president at the mine, had been employed at the company for 24 years and was also a site safety and health representative. The union filed a complaint which went up to the High Court but was ultimately decided in favour of the employer.

Workers in the construction industry are subject to laws that impose additional restrictions on their right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike . Employers in this industry use intimidation tactics, such as photographing workers, threatening workers with fines and penalties and threatening to sack employees involved in lawful industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. and/or public rallies. For example, on March 4, Lend Lease and John Holland sent letters to construction workers warning them they could face individual fines of up to $10,200 if they attended a national union rally protesting against the Abbott Government’s industrial relations industrial relations The individual and collective relations and dealings between workers and employers at the workplace, as well as the institutional interaction between unions, employers and also the government.

See social dialogue and other policies.

Overseas workers engaged to perform work on temporary 457 visas are among the most vulnerable workers in Australia and are commonly subject to unfair treatment or abuse by their employer. Cases reported to unions and/or otherwise on the public record include physical violence and intimidation as well as threats to terminate a worker’s employment which may result in the employee being deported if they don’t find a new sponsoring employer within 28 days.

On 11 May 2015 an International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) conference in Perth, Australia, declared Chevron’s Barrow Island a ’port of convenience’ (POC)’ for excluding the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) from the port. The ITF’s “Port of Convenience” campaign mirrors its “Flags of Convenience” campaign, and targets all world ports judged to exclude union labour or undermine union conditions.
Chevron was preparing to export liquid natural gas (LNG) from the Australian island, but did not want Australian union labour involved. The union and Chevron were at loggerheads over the company’s claims that Australian unions were to blame for an estimated USD17 billion overspend at the Gorgon LNG Project. The unions commissioned a report that claimed mismanagement and logistical issues were behind the overspend, while accusing the company of breaching health and safety guidelines. Chevron was suing the union for USD20 million in damages over union safety stoppages.

In March 2015 the Community and Public Sector Union, the Public Service Association of New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) filed a complaint with the ILO International Labour Organization A tripartite United Nations (UN) agency established in 1919 to promote working and living conditions. The main international body charged with developing and overseeing international labour standards.

See tripartism, ITUC Guide to international trade union rights asking it to investigate the NSW government’s actions in denying them the right to collectively bargain for wage increases.
In 2011, the government of New South Wales enacted a law preventing employees from seeking wage rises above 2.5 per cent per annum. Collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
on wages is therefore restricted, capping public sector employee wage increases at 2.5 per cent per annum. Under certain conditions, increases above the cap are allowed, but only if they are offset by cost savings.
The complaint came as unions rallied around the country to protest against the NSW and Federal government’s privatisation of public assets and salary cuts.

In Queensland, the Government has passed laws which remove important protections for state public sector workers with respect to termination, change and redundancy that exist in collective agreements and awards and render unenforceable any restrictions on the use of contractors. These laws come at a time when the government is laying off tens of thousands of workers. New laws also impose requirements on the industrial tribunal in Queensland to take into account the state’s financial position and fiscal strategy when determining public sector wages and conditions by arbitration arbitration A means of resolving disputes outside the courts through the involvement of a neutral third party, which can either be a single arbitrator or an arbitration board. In non-binding arbitration, the disputing parties are free to reject the third party’s recommendation, whilst in binding arbitration they are bound by its decision. Compulsory arbitration denotes the process where arbitration is not voluntarily entered into by the parties, but is prescribed by law or decided by the authorities.

See conciliation, mediation . The laws introduce limitations on the right to bargain collectively and take industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. , including requirements for protected action ballots, provisions enabling an employer to submit a ballot directly to employees, and new powers for the Minister to terminate industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. on a number of grounds.

The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 also removes a number of existing safeguards on individual statutory contracts (known as Individual Flexibility Arrangements) that were designed to address significant problems associated with Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) made under the former Workplace Relations Act. In practice these changes will enable employers to exploit vulnerable employees and systematically undermine collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
by requiring employees to enter into an arrangement that reduces terms and conditions of employment on an individual basis.

The provisions of the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 restrict the right to freely bargain for a “greenfields agreement” to cover a new enterprise. The proposed amendments enable an employer to unilaterally give notice of a three month negotiation period, the consequence of which is that at the end of the period, the good faith bargaining requirements no longer apply to negotiations and an employer can request the Commission to approve an agreement (that covers the union) without the union’s agreement. The new provisions limit the outcomes that are available through arbitration arbitration A means of resolving disputes outside the courts through the involvement of a neutral third party, which can either be a single arbitrator or an arbitration board. In non-binding arbitration, the disputing parties are free to reject the third party’s recommendation, whilst in binding arbitration they are bound by its decision. Compulsory arbitration denotes the process where arbitration is not voluntarily entered into by the parties, but is prescribed by law or decided by the authorities.

See conciliation, mediation by requiring the Commission to set terms that are consistent with prevailing pay and conditions in the relevant industry. Essentially, this is a return to the position under Work Choices where an employer could make an “agreement” with themselves.

The provisions of the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 concerning right of entry will make it even more difficult for unions to access workplaces. The current provisions of the Act enable a union official to enter a workplace to hold discussions with employees whose industrial interests the union is entitled to represent and who wish to participate in those discussions. The proposed amendments will require employees to take positive steps to enable a union to attend a workplace unless a union is already covered by an agreement. Contrary to the very clear pre-election commitment given by the Government, there is no explicit right of entry where a union is seeking to bargain in good faith for an agreement. In practice, employers will be able to prevent unions from accessing workplaces in order to invite employees to join a union or commence collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
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The Bill also reverses recent amendments to the Fair Work Act that required employers to provide unions with a suitable location to meet with workers and facilitate access to worksites at remote locations by providing accommodation and transport on a cost-recovery basis,

The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2014 contains new pre-requisites that must be met in order to take lawful industrial action industrial action Any form of action taken by a group of workers, a union or an employer during an industrial dispute to gain concessions from the other party, e.g. a strike, go-slow or an overtime ban, or a lockout on the part of the employer. . If the Bill is passed, there will be no right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike unless the employer agrees to bargain for a collective agreement or the Commission makes a majority support determination, scope order or low paid authorisation. In practice, the only way of compelling an employer to come to the bargaining table will be to obtain a determination that a majority of employees who will be covered by the agreement want to bargain.

NSW laws have always prohibited public servants (including teachers, police and nurses) from striking, but provided for arbitration arbitration A means of resolving disputes outside the courts through the involvement of a neutral third party, which can either be a single arbitrator or an arbitration board. In non-binding arbitration, the disputing parties are free to reject the third party’s recommendation, whilst in binding arbitration they are bound by its decision. Compulsory arbitration denotes the process where arbitration is not voluntarily entered into by the parties, but is prescribed by law or decided by the authorities.

See conciliation, mediation of wage claims by an independent workplace tribunal. During the year, the conservative government passed a law dictating that the tribunal could not award a pay increase greater than 2.5% per annum, in line with the government’s wages policy. This allows the government to dictate the wages of over 300.000 workers, without the obligation to bargain and without the right to strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike .

In practice, many employers (particularly in the mining sector) do their best to frustrate trade union activity. Examples include employer refusals to transport union officials to remote sites to meet with workers, refusals to bargain collectively until the union can demonstrate it has majority support in the workplace, refusal to allow union delegates to undertake union activity in the workplace during working time.

In many industries, harassment and victimisation of union members and delegates occurs, but it is often difficult to prove an anti-union motive in court. One exception is the recent case of Barclay v Bendigo TAFE, where a union delegate was disciplined for sending emails to staff that were critical of the University. The University claimed it was simply responding to action that was “contrary to University policy”, but the court found an anti-union motive existed. Unfortunately, this decision has been appealed by the employer to the High Court.

The passing of the Fair Work Act in 2009 reinstated many of the rights which had been removed by the previous Australian Government, and the establishment of Fair Work Australia as a government authority provided a mechanism through which these rights can be enforced.
At the same time, employers were able to exploit deficiencies in the legislation which remained in place, including restrictions on collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
insufficient protection from unfair dismissal for workers in small businesses during a 12-month probationary period, limitations on right of entry of trade union representatives to workplaces, and the retention of the notorious Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).