Westpac and the FSU have reached an in-principle agreement on a new agreement covering about 30,000 employees across Westpac and its subsidiary banks that will for the first time remove the link between performance targets and fixed pay increases for all staff earning less than $75,000 per annum.
A company's parental leave policy – which breached the NES by making unpaid parental leave only available to "primary" caregivers - has cost it $170,000 in the unpaid wages and redundancy pay that an employee would have received if he had been allowed to access the leave and its flow-on benefits.
Australia's largest rail freight operator, Aurizon, has been ordered to provide the full pro-rata rate of pay to a train driver who was to receive a reduced amount under a compassionate grounds/short-term medical disability clause when she returned part-time from maternity leave.
Nannies won't need formal childcare training to participate in the federal government's new $246m two-year trial to help shiftworkers and those in rural and regional areas to meet the costs of home-based care.
Two BHP Coal employees who helped look after their newborn babies while their partners recovered from caesarean sections were not entitled to parental leave as the primary care givers under the company's enterprise agreement, the FWC has ruled.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has conceded that savings "won't be vast" from cutting the maximum payment under its paid parental leave scheme to $50,000, while the Greens are pushing for the new regime to be fully-funded by the Coalition's proposed levy on business.
Employers will only have a role in paying workers their government-funded parental leave entitlement if they want one, under legislation introduced into federal parliament by the Coalition this morning.
The Coalition has largely succeeded in neutralising IR as a 2013 federal election issue by promising to retain – at least for one term – Labor's Fair Work framework, but Australia's two major parties are still going to the September 7 poll with some significant policy differences, including on paid parental leave, right of entry, and construction industry regulation. Workplace Express compares their IR policies and those of the Greens, whose future hold on the Senate balance of power is uncertain.
