Queensland Council of Unions secretary Jacqueline King says Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke is "receptive" to calls for new gender equity laws replicating the State's legislation that has "made more of a difference" in its first year than in the previous two decades under the Queensland IRC's equal remuneration principle.
A jeweller who showered a manager with gifts and compliments, along with unrequited declarations of his affections and a slap on the bottom, is facing a record damages payout for sexually harassing her and victimising her for complaining about it, while his law firm is under fire for the "intimidatory and vindictive" tone of its correspondence.
A tribunal has awarded $236,000 in damages, plus potential further lost earnings and interest, to a long-serving language teacher who developed a psychological injury when his employer "excluded" him from the workplace for two years after he suffered a debilitating spinal stroke.
The Qantas "weaponisation" of labour hire underlines the need for the "same job, same pay" provisions in Labor's Closing Loopholes legislation, according to the airline's flight crew union.
A FWC presidential member has taken a harder line on extending notice periods for protected action, rejecting Virgin Australia's bid to increase warnings of strikes and bans from three to seven days, because it would result in diminished worker bargaining power.
Biotechnology giant CSL has made a rare application for bargaining orders against two maintenance unions, the ETU and AMWU, whose members voted up protected action ballots in September.
A lawyer for early childhood education employers involved in the sector's supported bargaining test case says that for future applications where participants are not as aligned, he suspects it will be a slow, challenging and "very cumbersome process", while a union leader in the case says the FWC is helping to bring the parties together.
The FWC looks set to arbitrate the bargaining deadlock at Fire Rescue Victoria next year, after it scheduled a hearing date next month to hear threshold issues arising from its first intractable bargaining declaration.
ALDI has assured workers it will provide backpay this week for before and after shift duties it might have required of them, after the SDA launched a class action to pursue alleged underpayments totalling as much as $150 million over the past six years.
