Union industrial officers are increasingly being supplanted by external IR lawyers, with the phenomenon most pronounced in "organising" unions, according to the principal of a boutique union-clientele law firm.
A full Federal Court has thrown out Serco's appeal against a finding that a senior manager sacked a trainer after he complained about the way she conducted a bullying investigation.
The Minns Government has passed major reforms that establish anti-bullying and s-xual harassment jurisdictions in the IRC and allow workers to seek preventative orders and up to $100,000 in damages, while also significantly lifting the small claims cap.
The Federal Court has today ordered an employee to pay indemnity costs, after he unreasonably refused his employer's "entirely reasonable and sensible" request for a "brief period of voluntary restraint", forcing it to obtain an order to suppress evidence in his general protections application.
Academics say Menulog's abandoned bid for an on-demand delivery services award holds the clues to tensions and challenges likely to confront those attempting to establish the rules of the game for employee-like workers more broadly.
The FWC will arbitrate a dispute between a research institute and two former employees seeking redundancy payments, after they overcame an objection that only the NTEU is entitled to file the application following the expiry of their "maximum terms".
Eminent academic Roy Green will lead a review of the Albanese Government's just transition legislation to determine whether it is meeting "Parliament's intent to build a world-leading and consistent approach to worker support in the energy transition", the Net Zero Economy Authority said today.
The ACTU has renewed its call to remove or curb employers' ability to lock out their workforces, after a multinational mining company extended to almost three weeks its freeze on mineworkers returning to the job at an Illawarra coal pit.
The Federal Court has ousted HSU secretary Diana Asmar and has put her Victorian No 1 branch wholly in the hands of administrator Charlie Donnelly until a fresh leadership team is elected, as early as the middle of next year.
Assistant productivity minister Andrew Leigh says Australians have used about a quarter of the post-1980 productivity dividend to "work less", as he revisited a 1930 John Maynard Keynes prediction that people in 2030 "would inherit a world shaped by rising productivity and the promise of abundance".
