The Fair Work Ombudsman is frustrated it is failing to secure "any real commitment" from Caltex on a "compliance partnership" to handle underpayments by franchisees, despite being in talks for 18 months.
The SA Labor Party has pledged to criminalise wage theft if it retains power at the state election on March 17, with the worst repeat offenders facing jail terms of up to 15 years.
Requirements for bargaining representatives from this week to disclose financial benefits stemming from enterprise agreements before workers vote on them will make it easier to track the revenue the deals generate for unions, employers say.
An employer could face a ninefold increase in fines ordered by the Federal Circuit Court after the FWO successfully appealed the judgment on the basis that it wrongly grouped contraventions as a single course of action.
In a ruling that underlines the Fair Work Ombudsman's pursuit of accessorial liability against advisors, a court has for the first time imposed a fine on an accountancy firm involved in an employer's underpayments.
The Federal Court has ordered the CFMEU and a delegate to pay almost $100,000 in penalties for the coercion involved when he prevented a subcontractor's employee from working on a job because he wasn't a union member.
After entering into an FWO compliance partnership that commits it to taking responsibility for underpayments across its trolley collection network for the past three years, Woolworths says it would welcome working with any regulatory body to ensure workers in all supply chains are paid correctly.
In the FWO's first underpayment prosecution relying on race discrimination prohibitions in the Fair Work Act, a court has found a Tasmanian hotel and its manager deliberately short-changed a head chef and kitchen hand and expected them to work long hours, six days a week because of their Malaysian nationality and Chinese race.
