A full Federal Court has confirmed that homecare, disability and social workers should not be paid penalty rates for shifts immediately before or after sleepovers, four months after the FWC made draft award variations that will achieve the opposite.
The SDA is urging McDonald's to settle major rest breaks cases ahead of a lengthy hearing, as KFC and its franchisees agree to pay about $29 million to resolve a similar class action accusing them of denying proper breaks to tens of thousands of workers.
Employers are seeking work-from-home-related changes to the clerks award to make it easier to spread out working hours without requiring penalty rates, remove minimum engagement restrictions and overhaul meal and rest break provisions.
A FWC presidential member has clarified the Commission's "global" approach to the BOOT and warned that agreements that pay only slightly above-award will attract greater scrutiny, in rejecting a West Australian coffee chain's proposed agreement.
The 25% exemption rate the Ai Group has proposed for an estimated one million workers covered by the clerical award "does not adequately compensate" for the loss of penalty rates and overtime, according to ASU national secretary Emeline Gaske.
Ahead of a 10-day full bench hearing of a bid to significantly shake-up the retail award, the ACTU has hit out at employers backing measures to "buy-out" core conditions for workers on as little as $53,680 a year, ditch "smokos" and introduce split shifts.
Lawyers behind an underpayments class action on behalf of more than 20,000 junior doctors say a $230 million settlement reached with NSW Health is the largest in the nation's legal history and represents a "seismic shift".
The SDA has pledged to stake out and help slay the "new zombie agreements" following a FWC decision to terminate Billabong's 2012 national deal at the conclusion of its peak trading period, while the union is also leaping into the crowded KFC class action space.
Shine Lawyers says the exclusion of thousands of SDA members from its McDonald's class action will "inform future interplay" between union and non-union representative proceedings, while a full court ruling has set a "powerful precedent" for using collective action to protect workers' rights.
Shine and RAFFWU are preparing a class action against KFC to win compensation for potentially tens of thousands of workers allegedly denied proper rest breaks, weeks after the Federal Court slammed the SDA over its approach to McDonald's rest breaks litigation and decided its case should run concurrently with an earlier Shine/RAFFWU proceeding.
