Legal limits on the scope of bargaining mean that safety laws might provide a better avenue to address workplace climate change impacts than using enterprise agreements, according to an IR law academic.
A union involved in more than 20% of the FWC's s448A compulsory conciliation conferences since they started in June says they come with a significant "risk versus reward overlay" that threatens to derail protected action and an "urgent fix" is required.
The FWC's national practice leader for bargaining says "almost all" members are issuing directions in addition to attendance orders ahead of compulsory post-PABO conciliations and appear to be regularly making recommendations during the conferences.
A court has ordered a worker to pay indemnity costs for her former employer's defence of a general protections claim, after she ignored legal advice and refused six settlement offers reaching up to $40,000, because she considered them "hush money".
Federal Parliament has passed a trio of bills that establish the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service as an independent statutory HR agency and overhaul employment arrangements for parliamentary staff.
Employers can comply with the new "positive duty" to eliminate sexual harassment and sex discrimination by fostering a respectful culture, ensuring workers have avenues to report incidents, and taking a "risk-based" approach to prevention, according to Human Rights Commission guidance.
The FWC has thrown out a cafe's argument that a worker who performed a single paid "trial shift" had not yet been engaged and could not bring a general protections case against it.
A leading IR lawyer says the Albanese Government's third tranche casuals provisions are a win for employers as they will provide "considerable certainty", but he predicts an ambiguous independent contracting test will produce "windfall gains and windfall losses".
The High Court has today unanimously held that Qantas took unlawful adverse action against nearly 2000 former ground crew when it outsourced their jobs at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when their agreements were due to nominally expire.
