Some 35,000 Department of Human Services employees began voting on Friday on a proposed deal delivering a 2% annual pay rise, while the FWC has recently approved agreements for three mid-sized APS agencies providing the same quantum to about 8,500 employees.
Key crossbench senators have sided with Labor and the Greens to delay a vote on legislation to re-establish the ABCC until at least the middle of March.
The Turnbull Government has played down a report that it plans to freeze employer superannuation contributions at the current 9.5%, scrapping the plan to increase the SGC to 12%.
The Turnbull Government is threatening a double dissolution election if the Senate refuses to pass the Bill it reintroduced today to re-establish the ABCC.
The Turnbull Government will tomorrow re-introduce legislation to re-establish the ABCC, aiming to win enough support from the Senate crossbenchers for it be passed by early March.
Welcome ceremonies for new FWC members have revealed that one of the new appointees fought so hard for a provision in the Fair Work Act that it was informally named after him, while another told of her "baptism of fire" when she took up her IR legal career with an employer-clientele law firm in the wake of it running the landmark Dollar Sweets case.
The Heydon Royal Commission has recommended that the Turnbull Government introduce special legislation to disqualify officers of the CFMEU who are deemed by Parliament to be not to be fit and proper persons, while stopping short of recommending the union's deregistration.
The Productivity Commission, in its final report on the IR system today, says the FWC should be broken up into two bodies, with the new institution to determine minimum wages and awards.
The Heydon Royal Commission has confirmed it will deliver its final report - which will run to "several volumes" - to the Federal Government by the end of the year.
Employment Minister Michaelia Cash today appointed a former Freehills and Clayton Utz lawyer, an ACCI IR director and two IR managers as members of the FWC, while she extended the term of the tribunal's sole acting commissioner.
