Workplace Relations Minister Senator Murray Watt will weigh into a gender undervaluation award review case to make it clear the wages of affected workers must not go backwards, after the ASU warned proposed changes to the community and disability sector award might leave some workers up to $700 a week worse off.
A FWC full bench has axed an 11-year-old deal that excluded minimum engagement periods for casuals, finding that it must terminate agreements if their continued operation would be unfair to "any" rather than all covered employees.
Queensland Health has been ordered to backpay a nurse for an unpaid suspension imposed while investigating a complaint that he "grabbed" a patient's t-sticles in an attempt to revive them after they fainted while showering, a tribunal finding it failed to inform him that it took into account previous allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
The Federal Court's top judge has approved a $180 million "stolen wages" settlement for Indigenous workers in the NT, but not before expressing dismay at the "excessive level of human resources" used by Shine Lawyers in pursuing the matter and sounding a warning about the rising incidence of litigation funders in class action cases.
Transgrid workers have won pay rises totalling 17.5% over three years after the FWC on Friday provided closure on a hard-fought campaign by making an intractable bargaining determination splitting the difference between employer and union proposals.
The FWC has refused to resolve a dispute about whether a remote locality allowance should be calculated on travel by road or "as the crow flies", but has determined, based on the parties' intentions, that a new Gladstone depot would not be covered by the allowance because it is "coastal" rather than remote.
Catholic school employers have escaped penalties for withholding backpay from two teachers who resigned before new agreements' retrospective pay rises came into effect, a judge finding that the deals' ambiguities contributed to the "honest and reasonable" mistake.
A 9.2% increase to the national minimum wage and award wages would restore low-paid workers' buying power to pre-pandemic trends without significantly affecting inflation, according to research finding no consistent link between minimum wage rises and inflation since 1990.
The ACTU is calling for a 4.5% increase to the minimum wage, well above the current inflation rate of 2.4%, to lift the annual full-time rate by $2,143 to $49,770, while Victoria's Allan Government is making the same pitch as its federal Labor counterpart, calling for a real increase in the minimum wage.
Ahead of the May 3 poll, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is supporting a real pay increase in this year's minimum wage case, going further than his 2022 election call for the FWC to ensure workers' pay not "go backwards".
