A full Federal Court has confirmed that homecare, disability and social workers should not be paid penalty rates for shifts immediately before or after sleepovers, four months after the FWC made draft award variations that will achieve the opposite.
The National Employment Standards' weekly hours limit is incompatible with FIFO and 24/7 operations because of their reliance on averaged and extended shifts, and the "reasonableness" test is too burdensome, AREEA says in its submission to the NES inquiry.
Launceston Council's chief executive says he cannot thank the ASU enough for its role in negotiating an Australian-first in-principle deal enshrining a four-day work week with "five-day wages", further declaring that he would like the model enshrined in law "right across this country".
The author of a book tracing 150 years of campaigning for a shorter Australian working week says it offers crucial lessons for current efforts to win a four-day work week, cut unpaid overtime, and properly account for domestic labour, while AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy considers it part of a "just transition".
In its first use of the new power to unilaterally amend the terms of substandard proposed agreements, the FWC has signalled it will rewrite provisions in three Aldi enterprise deals that leave storepersons worse off, to enable their approval.
Workers at Woodside's Pluto 2 LNG expansion in the Pilbara have overwhelmingly voted down head contractor Bechtel's proposed agreement, while Rio Tinto's Paraburdoo iron ore workers are set to receive a pay rise, announced shortly after unions kicked-off their majority support campaign.
The ETU's WA branch is pushing to bargain for a separate agreement for continuing electrical, instrumentation or plumbing workers at the massive Pluto 2 LNG expansion, to uncouple from employees who will be demobilised as the construction phase ends, and is urging workers to vote down a pay offer that "does not pass the pub test".
A leading employment and IR barrister says the four-day working week, working from home and the right to disconnect are part of an unavoidable reorganisation of working hours that is set to become "the big issue of our time".
