Prime Minister Scott Morrison's plan for a dialogue with unions and employers over changes to workplace laws has sparked a scramble among stakeholders to get a seat at the table.
The Labor Opposition has seized on a warning by Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe that the JobKeeper wage subsidy should not be phased out too soon, insisting it identifies the dangers of the government's "snap back" strategy.
The NTEU has declared that a proposed framework to secure higher education jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic is "dead" as a national agreement but might still be voted up at individual universities.
The NSW Government has imposed a 12-month wage freeze on its 408,000-strong public sector workforce, but has provided a job security guarantee for the same period.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison's headland speech on a new approach to IR change extended an olive branch to unions by dropping the "ensuring integrity' legislation, but also raised the prospect of further measures to crack down on unlawful behaviour on construction sites.
The ACTU will head into the Morrison Government's JobMaker policy discussions with the aim of reducing insecure employment and extending paid pandemic leave.
Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter will chair five working groups with the aim of producing a "practical reform" of the IR system to help grow jobs as the economy emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a significant decision examining how employers can lawfully assess "useful work" when standing down employees, the FWC has ruled a pandemic-affected cruise operator acted "upon proper principles" when transferring some of a superintendent's duties to others.
Thirteen major law firms have dropped their application for temporary changes to the Legal Services Award in response to the coronavirus, a month after the ASU demanded they prove the changes were necessary.
