The Albanese Government has again kept its election promise to urge the FWC's Annual Wage Review bench to order real wage increases for award-reliant and minimum wage workers that keep pace with the cost of living.
The prospect of the first lawful strikes in more than 25 years at BHP's Iron Ore mines has moved closer, after ETU members on a crucial Pilbara power network voted up a protected action ballot.
Peak employer body ACCI will seek a 3.5% rise in the Annual Wage Review 2026 after chief executive Andrew McKellar described the ACTU's 5% claim as "self-defeating".
The meat workers union has secured a same-job, same-pay order for on-hire chicken deboning workers at a poultry processing facility, but has failed to win a similar arrangement for outsourced cleaners at the same workplace.
The Business Council is urging the Albanese Government to repeal part of its intractable bargaining determination framework, while warning of same-job, same-pay orders that risk "overcompensating" labour hire workers and imposing additional obligations where they are already receiving host rates, in its submission to the Closing Loopholes review.
The ACTU is seeking a 5% rise in award rates and the federal minimum wage to keep pace with cost-of-living pressures "that have gotten a lot tougher" with the fuel price rises from the Middle East war and interest rate hikes.
The Albanese Government will amend the Fair Work Act to fast-track applications by unions and transport operators to win "emergency" supply chain orders from the FWC to raise rates to keep pace with surging fuel prices, driven by the Middle East war.
The Albanese Government has today won passage through Parliament of legislation that streamlines choice of super funds when employers are "onboarding" new employees and seeks to prevent advertising of super products during that process.
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.
