Court ruling backs union access to the workplace


UNIONS have won a significant victory in their ability to recruit members and enter workplaces after a Federal Court decision that ruled that employers must ''respond positively'' to union requests.

Critics warn that the decision is the latest under the Fair Work laws to give more power to unions and puts much greater responsibilities on employers.

Until now employers have been able to use a variety of techniques to stall unions, including telling them to meet workers in inhospitable places - such as in an infamous 2008 case when workers were forced to meet in a female toilet in a Melbourne factory.

In the Federal Court decision Justice Richard Tracey said it was implicit in the Fair Work Act that ''the employer is required to respond positively to any reasonable request that a particular room be made available''.

In that decision he fined Melbourne Safety Glass $9000 after it refused right of entry to two officials of the furnishing division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.

CFMEU divisional assistant national secretary Leo Skourdoumbis said the decision was a ''ground-breaking piece of law'' and said it was the first ''judicial reversal of [former prime minister John] Howard's draconian right-of-entry provisions''.

He said the union would move to insert Justice Tracey's decision into workplace agreements. Right of entry, he said, was a ''cornerstone democratic right''.

Howard was fond of trying to wind Australia's work relations back to the 1800's.
I do hope the courts send the bills for costs directly to the Liberal Party, I suspect the billionaire miners and big tobacco would pay the bills for them, just as they paid their election costs.