The Albanese Government's Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, introduced today, ushers in a new multi-employer bargaining regime, but with safeguards that will bar participation by unions with a record of flouting workplace laws, limit industrial action to those in a "supported bargaining stream" and exclude the commercial construction sector.
The Albanese Government's first major tranche of IR legislation beefs-up workers' rights to secure flexible working arrangements and empowers the FWC to arbitrate if conciliation of a refused request fails.
A worker who claims FWC President Iain Ross admitted to having a problem with commissioners' "colonial attitude" has lost his Federal Court bid to sue the tribunal for racial discrimination.
The Albanese Government, in its first Budget, has allocated almost $70 million over four years for the FWO to take over the ABCC's regulatory role after its abolition, while delivering $20 million over the same period for the FWC to handle gender equity pay cases.
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to stop planned strikes at a $1 billion lithium plant, after finding that its interpretation of notification requirements would effectively shave a day off the protected period.
A FWC full bench has taken a union and employer to task for failing to notify it to resume hearing the former's challenge to a contentious hospitality deal under which employees can work "voluntary" additional hours without penalties.
The MBA says it is pressing NSW's Perrottet Government for a procurement policy to protect builders against the ETU's pursuit of a "disastrous" deal with major contractors that it describes as the "spear point" of multi-employer pattern bargaining.
Incoming CFMMEU construction and general division national secretary Zachary (Zach) Smith will take over from the long-serving Dave Noonan in April, after 15 years with the union and serving as leader and assistant leader of the ACT branch for the past three years.
Agreements lodged with the FWC in the fortnight to September 9 delivered annual rises of just 2.4% – the lowest in the short history of the Commission's "real-time" bargained wage data – after education deals effectively paying 1.7% a year to more than 10,000 workers dragged down the average increase.
John Holland's failure to identify the significance of a decision rejecting its earlier greenfields deal when applying to have an almost identical one approved "verged on misleading", a FWC full bench has held, quashing its approval while refusing to quietly do so "by consent".
