The FAAA is calling for a further tightening of the Closing Loopholes reforms, warning that offshoring arrangements and other tactics risk being used to sidestep or undermine the "same job, same pay" regime.
The Albanese Government is considering scrapping a "disastrous" requirement for the FWC to decide whether workers have been sacked before conciliating dismissal-related general protections claims, as part of its response to the tribunal's ballooning workload.
The ACTU is backing calls to allow media and arts contractors to access minimum standards orders regardless of whether they use digital platforms, and to broaden labour hire "same-job, same-pay" orders to include conditions, in its submission to the Closing Loopholes review.
The biggest mover on Labor's same-job, same-pay laws is using the Closing Loopholes review to call for a major expansion to include parity of conditions for on-hire workers, while capturing associated entities and tightening the exemption for service providers.
Forthcoming Victorian laws providing rights to work from home two days a week will apply to businesses big and small, according to Premier Jacinta Allan.
UK employers might have to pay workers up to eight weeks compensation if they unreasonably refuse a flexible work request, under changes proposed by the Starmer Government.
Working from home arrangements have been a big success in the Australian Public Service, with a mere handful of disputes about flexible work requests, the CPSU has told a Senate inquiry into a bill aimed at enshrining WFH rights.
Employers should be required to consider compensating or giving additional leave to workers who are unable to work from home, to offset savings remote workers make on commuting costs, a police union has told the inquiry into the Greens' WFH Bill.
Australia's regulation of precarious workers is "world-leading" and we arguably have "the most progressive industrial relations legislation on the planet", but academics need to rebuild the IR discipline to address its erosion and the rise of human resource management, according to UNSW's Michael Quinlan.
