Victoria's nation-first pilot scheme providing paid sick leave to casual and contract workers in selected industries has paid out more than one million hours of leave at a cost of more than $22 million in the past year, but unenthusiastic employers ensure its future remains cloudy despite evidence it reduced workplace illnesses.
Agreements filed with the FWC for approval in the first half of February delivered an average pay rise of 3.1% a year, according to "real-time" data released this morning.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has told the High Court that upholding Qantas' challenge to a finding that it unlawfully outsourced ground-handling jobs would lead to a "chronic imbalance" in IR, while the airline argues that the Government should not be allowed to intervene in the case in the first place.
A FWC full bench has found in awarding rail workers an additional 1% increase this year and next that the State Government has no "logical basis" for its public sector wages cap and has never complied with it anyway.
Australian workplace laws have a "legislative preference" for registered unions to act as a "specific vehicle" for workers seeking to enforce their rights under industrial instruments, the Federal Court has heard.
The FWC has slapped anti-bullying orders on a gated community's body corporate and its treasurer who taunted on-site caretakers about their claim of "living in misery" over the Christmas period because of unpaid invoices.
BHP is offering workers in its in-house labour hire arm a $5000 sign-on sweetener ahead of a ballot on proposed deals that promise far less than a recently approved BMA agreement, while the union says the subsidiaries should be covered by Labor's proposed "Same Job, Same Pay" laws.
Newly-appointed FWC expert panel members Marian Baird and Mark Cully will serve on this year's crucial minimum wage case bench, as inflation substantially outpaces pay growth and the Reserve Bank continues to warn against the prospect of a wage-price spiral.
In returning a worker to her job and restoring most of her lost pay, finding the policy the worker breached "might make sense to copyright lawyers and some IT specialists, but probably no one else" the FWC has cautioned that "employer policy documents and manuals must be accessible, understandable and reasonable in their terms".
Casuals cannot be "dispensed with" simply by reducing their hours to zero, the FWC has ruled, clearing the way for a worker to proceed with his adverse action claim.
