Employers are seeking work-from-home-related changes to the clerks award to make it easier to spread out working hours without requiring penalty rates, remove minimum engagement restrictions and overhaul meal and rest break provisions.
A FWC full bench led by President Adam Hatcher has abruptly ended conciliation of the crucial clerks award WFH case after a "highly regrettable" leak of confidential information to the media, while issuing a broader warning that participants should respect processes conducted behind-closed-doors.
Labor maintains that its legislation to protect penalty and overtime rates, to be introduced to Parliament tomorrow, will block changes to awards that might make a single worker worse off.
A Federal Circuit and Family Court judge has urged the Albanese Government to "substantially" increase penalties for failing to engage with compliance notices and to empower the FWO to seek the removal of directors, to prevent recidivism and deter directors and companies from ignoring notices.
With more than a third of young workers paid $15 an hour or less and almost half working unpaid overtime, loaded rates could provide a partial solution, according to new university research on the exploitation of young workers.
In a judgment that will ripple through a FWC case considering the way homecare, disability and social workers are paid for shifts immediately before or after sleepovers, the Federal Court has rejected FWO arguments that penalty rates should apply.
The Federal Court has overturned a ruling that would have upset the commission-based pay arrangements for stockbrokers and financial advisors, finding an Ord Minnett advisor had been award-free.
In a significant ruling on calculating academics' payments for time spent marking course work, a Federal Court has found the FWO's compliance notice served on an allegedly underpaying private university "bad at law".
The FWC's annual wage review expert panel will hand down its 2024-25 ruling on Tuesday morning, after the newly-returned Albanese Government urged a real increase in the minimum wage and award rates, the ACTU sought a 4.5% rise and ACCI and AIG no more than 2.5% and 2.6% respectively.
Just 6% of clerical workers who seek WFH arrangements are knocked back by their employer, according to a new Swinburne University study commissioned by the FWC as part of the work from home test case.
