Advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman has prompted the Fair Work Commission to set up a full bench to iron out inconsistencies between modern award provisions and the national employment standards, as part of its 4-yearly review.
In what the UFU has hailed as a "huge victory", the Fair Work Commission has refused to terminate two enterprise agreements covering Melbourne's firefighters, finding it would have triggered an "appreciable and unmatched shift" in bargaining power to their employer.
A Federal Court full bench has upheld a finding that the main retail award applies to delivery drivers employed by the online arm of supermarket giant Coles.
The Federal Court has fined a company almost $200,000 for underpaying its aged care workers more than $2.5m over a five year period, finding that its unlawful employment practices might have given it an unfair competitive advantage.
The Federal Court has ordered a barrister to pay an employer's costs in a failed adverse action appeal, finding that they were incurred as a result of her "poor judgment".
In a wide-ranging attack on the Heydon Royal Commission, ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons has dubbed it as part of a conservative agenda to restrict "organising, industrial action, right of entry, public campaigning, political action and expenditure, litigation, access to arbitration and the right to be self-governing".
The Abbott Government will try its luck with a fourth major IR Bill before the end of the year, despite the first three having been blocked or held up in the Senate.
A Cbus Super manager has again denied she collaborated in leaking personal information about Lis-Con employees to the CFMEU despite being warned by Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon that the "time for protecting other people had ended".
The Federal Circuit Court has found the sole director of a delicatessen/cafe accessorily liable in an underpayment case spanning more than 30 years and four periods of industrial law.
A long history of employee complaints and the need to send a strong message to the hair and beauty industry that "it does not pay to underpay workers" has led to a hairdressing chain being fined $70,000 for short-changing an apprentice more than $8,000.
