Qantas has agreed to top-up the pay of freight workers at subsidiary Australian Air Express by almost $7000 a year to achieve parity with their directly-engaged colleagues after the ASU raised the prospect of lodging a same-job same-pay claim.
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 Health Services Union has won 12 days paid reproductive leave in a deal for about 1600 disability service workers, in a "watershed" development it says could be expanded nationwide, as it bargains to entrench the entitlement in five further agreements.
Wharfies at Qube's bulk and general ports plan to step up protected industrial action with bans and limitations this week in Melbourne, Port Kembla and Brisbane, while warning that strikes are imminent.
MEU members at Batchfire's Callide thermal coal mine in Queensland have overwhelmingly endorsed a protected action ballot, hot on the heels of the FWC's first same-job, same-pay ruling for the site's labour hire workers, who will benefit from any bargaining gains at the site.
A Macquarie University academic says Medibank employees trialling a four-day "100:80:100" working week are performing better and feeling more motivated, while productivity is unchanged, with some indicating they would choose an employer based on whether the option is available.
Unions will bargain for artificial intelligence "productivity clauses" to ensure workers are paid a "fair share" of additional wealth created by the technology rather than just generating "super profits" for employers, under a new ACTU policy.
A "broad coalition" of unions will call at this week's ACTU Congress in Adelaide for the peak group to press the Albanese Labor Government to legislate next year to insert 10 days reproductive health leave into the NES, according to key affiliate the Queensland Council of Unions.
The Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association is at the pointy end of a bid for an intractable bargaining declaration to break an alleged "impasse" in negotiations on behalf of Qantas engineers in Tamworth, with the Flying Kangaroo and the union due to report back to the FWC this morning.
Queensland's peak union body will push the Albanese Government to add paid reproductive health leave to the National Employment Standards in its next term, and has released a model clause to advance the claim in bargaining, as part of its "It's For Every Body" campaign.
