A federal government official has told the Senate inquiry into the Albanese Government's plan to boost paid parental leave by six weeks that the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommendations on the "use it or lose it" provisions will inform the second phase of reforms that take effect in July next year.
An employer did not force the resignation of an experienced HR manager suffering a difficult pregnancy when it refused to grant her a year's parental leave, a court has found.
Submissions close next month for a Senate inquiry into the Albanese Government's first tranche of changes to federally-funded paid parental leave, which expands access for partners and higher income earners while enabling parents to spread it out in multiple blocks as small as a day at a time.
The Senate Work and Care inquiry's Labor and Greens majority is urging the Albanese Government to move swiftly to consider a right to disconnect, make flexibility requests an enforceable right and provide "roster justice" by ensuring workers with variable hours have predictability and certainty, in a 152-page interim report tabled this afternoon.
A proposal by Queensland's Palaszczuk Labor Government to remove gendered language from parental leave entitlements is the beginning of the end of "women" as a protected class at law and risks making mothers invisible, according to submissions on its IR Bill.
The next federal government should establish free early childhood education, amend the Fair Work Act to provide a legal right to a living wage for all workers, extend paid parental leave to 32 weeks and make the treasury responsible for "gender responsive budgeting", according to an academic group's report.
The newly-announced review of the 1973 Maternity Leave Act provides an opportunity for the Federal Government to resume its role as a pacesetter, according to Sydney University's Professor Marian Baird.
In another test of public-private ventures, prison officers at the country's largest and newest correctional centre are considering striking after overwhelmingly rejecting what the CPSU called a "lowball" deal put forward by operator Serco Australia.
