The TWU has filed the last of its promised applications aimed at overhauling standards in the road transport industry, asking the FWC to make a contractual chain order imposing 30-day payment deadlines and compulsory rate reviews, while prohibiting unfair "set-off" terms.
Mining giant Peabody has won special leave from the High Court to challenge a full Federal Court finding that it did not genuinely make workers redundant when it failed to consider whether it could redeploy workers to jobs performed by contractors.
FWC president Adam Hatcher will convene a directions hearing next month into the Commission's own-initiative case to develop a "workable" award clause that removes impediments to working from home.
The Federal Court has imposed a record penalty on a sushi restaurant chain to "disabuse" employers of the notion that penalties for underpayments are "an acceptable cost of doing business" and recommended that the Fair Work Ombudsman refer its chief executive's potential flouting of tax and migration laws to the ATO, Department of Home Affairs and ASIC.
The ACTU is recommending the FWC include more "practical detail" in its draft "right to disconnect" award term, to "spell out" what the Commission will consider when it determines whether or not a refusal is unreasonable and is also proposing a review in 12 months.
In a significant decision on paid parental leave, a FWC presidential member has ordered a State-owned public transport provider to backpay a bus driver who claimed to be the primary carer of his newborn son while his wife recovered from an emergency caesarean section.
The FWC has warned employers against giving "generic and blanket HR answers" when they provide their "reasonable business grounds" for knocking back flexibility requests, before ultimately rejecting a bid from a worker with challenging caring responsibilities to continue working entirely from home.
