Some 30,000 Westpac employees have won a new entitlement under the bank's proposed new three-year enterprise agreement to five paid days of "family pathways leave" to support them through processes such as IVF and adoption, while those earning less than $102,000 will receive a 5% upfront increase in its first year.
A full bench comprising the FWC's three most senior members has made same-job, same-pay orders that will increase wages for one labour supplier's workers at a Queensland meatworks by about 25% and provide "significantly higher rates" for a second supplier's workers at the same workplace.
A Senate inquiry is inviting submissions on a Bill designed to ensure the Albanese Government's funding for a 15% work value pay rise for early childhood educators is passed on to the workers while avoiding major fee hikes, but a legislation scrutiny committee has questioned a lack of "oversight".
After Wilmar Sugar rejected a FWC recommendation to offer a 21.33% pay rise over four years, workers at its Queensland mills have narrowly voted up a three-year deal providing a 16% increase, plus a $2500 sign-on sweetener.
Maurice Blackburn's head of employment and industrial law, Josh Bornstein, says he has written a book challenging employers' increasing suppression of free speech to highlight "a major flaw in our democracy" and "a major threat" to workers' rights.
The FWC has granted a supported bargaining authorisation that boosts an IEU push for a 25% pay rise for teachers in more than 100 NSW preschools, while employers told the tribunal the Fair Work Act changes have finally put them in a position to negotiate.
The FWC has refused an application from a BHP Hunter Valley coal mine to transfer an employee - and future workers with similar circumstances - from the company's WA iron ore operations.
In a significant ruling on what constitutes a "genuine" effort to reach agreement while bargaining, a FWC full bench has upheld a member's decision to grant a PABO to a union, despite it having met with the employer only once by the time its application came before the tribunal.
A FWC member has refused to be drawn into a dispute between a private rail freight operator and the RTBU over whether a remote locality allowance should be calculated on travel by road or "as the crow flies", concluding that she could not disentangle conflicting versions about its inclusion in an agreement.
