Pay rates excluding bonuses have continued to grow at 4.2% a year in the December quarter of 2007, a level uncomfortably close to the RBA's 4.5% aggregate wage growth "ceiling", while rates of pay including bonuses have hit a new high.
A major defence contractor has been refused an exemption from racial discrimination laws to meet US security requirements, in a ruling by the Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission.
A Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision to exempt an enterprise agreement from parts of the State's Equal Opportunity Act might be without jurisdiction because certified agreements prevail over State discrimination laws, as well as the federal Age Discrimination Act, according to a specialist workplace lawyer.
HR salaries will grow substantially this year in Melbourne and Brisbane, but won't increase for top level IR/ER managers in the northern capital, according to recruitment company Robert Walters.
The Rudd Government has given the Productivity Commission a year to report on options for paid parental leave schemes, including their economic impact on small and medium businesses.
The Federal Court has fined a Victorian company $60,000 and ordered it to pay a former employee more than $6,000 after it transferred then suspended her when she took her underpayment complaint to the OWS and to court.
University funding will no longer be tied to universities offering AWAs to their employees, under legislation introduced to Parliament by Education Minister Julia Gillard this afternoon.
The Rudd Labor Government will ban AWAs in the federal public service, allow parties to pre-Work Choices agreements to extend them for up to three years, extend the life of NAPSAs, ban the unilateral termination of collective agreements, retain the Work Choices exceptional circumstances test for deals that fail the new no disadvantage test, and allow ITEAs to be offered on a take it or leave it basis, in its IR transitional bill introduced into parliament today by Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard.
On the eve of Labor introducing the first tranche of its IR reforms, new academic research says that its Forward with Fairness policy is a mixed bag for women in minimum wage sectors of the economy and fails to address the "fundamental disadvantages" they suffer.
The Reserve Bank has today warned that a wage/price spiral could result if inflation isn't tamed, while the Fair Pay Commission has begun the consultation process for its 2008 minimum wage review.
