The FWC has refused to approve a Subway franchisee's proposed deal designed to replace a zombie agreement, finding it not genuinely agreed because the employer failed to adequately explain which allowances would be absorbed into the rate of pay, and that penalty and minimum rates would freeze for the life of the agreement.
Compulsory post-PABO conferences further complicate an already onerous process, with little or no benefit, the ACTU, ANMF and CFMEU have told the review of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act, while the Ai Group says the conferences are "often worthwhile" and can avert industrial action.
The FWC has thrown out an agreement approval application because a "show of hands" vote counted by a manager failed to ensure confidentiality, but has confirmed such ballots are permissible.
The SDA is calling on the FWC to use its powers to unilaterally amend a proposed Sephora agreement if it refuses to provide undertakings tackling an allegedly "diabolical" overtime pay freeze it contends the beauty retailer did not explain to workers.
The SDA has won same-job, same-pay orders that will lift pay by $8 to $12 an hour for close to 200 labour hire workers placed at a Queensland Kmart warehouse, while it has also, in league with the UWU, secured similar orders that will raise wages for on-hire workers at Metcash by up to $12,600 a year.
Some 350 maintenance and sustainment workers at the Australian Submarine Corporation's Adelaide headquarters have succeeded in their year-long campaign for pay parity with their Western Australian colleagues, winning an upfront average increase of 18.5%.
A FWC full bench has quashed the approval of a company's CEPU-lodged agreement, found to have been voted up by two workers before it was used to cover AMWU members in a process "entirely lacking in authenticity and moral authority".
The FWC has declined to interfere with the ATO's decision to refuse a worker absent more than 248 days in a year access to unpaid personal leave, observing that its enterprise agreement did not provide an "unfettered" right to such time off.
Lawyers involved in "wage theft" class actions on behalf of thousands of junior doctors says Victorian public health services might face tens of millions of dollars in fines after a court found one of them "expressly and brazenly" instructed trainees to perform unpaid overtime.
The ETU's hard-fought campaigns for new deals with two NSW electricity suppliers have moved closer to FWC-arbitrated resolutions after the union and Endeavour Energy received a fortnight to hammer out their differences and state secretary Allen Hicks expressed hope that a Commission full bench would make an intractable bargaining determination for Transgrid "by early next year".
