The Albanese Government's 10-day paid family and domestic violence leave entitlement is "appropriate and sufficient" and the scheme is operating as intended, but poor awareness and evidentiary requirements are preventing its full utilisation, according to the report of an independent review, tabled in federal parliament today.
Some 30,000 Westpac employees have won a new entitlement under the bank's proposed new three-year enterprise agreement to five paid days of "family pathways leave" to support them through processes such as IVF and adoption, while those earning less than $102,000 will receive a 5% upfront increase in its first year.
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.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is taking a labour hire company to court for unlawfully deducting $500 fines from migrant workers' pay when they breached its drug and alcohol policy.
A parliamentary inquiry has recommended the Albanese Government consider amending the Fair Work Act's right to request flexible work to ensure menopausal women can access it, while it also wants reproductive leave added to the NES and awards.
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.
South Australia's Malinauskas Government is likely to soon secure passage of legislation establishing a portable long service leave scheme for the community services sector, with potential to build on it to include other sectors in future.
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.
