A Senate inquiry is inviting submissions on a Bill designed to ensure the Albanese Government's funding for a 15% work value pay rise for early childhood educators is passed on to the workers while avoiding major fee hikes, but a legislation scrutiny committee has questioned a lack of "oversight".
After Wilmar Sugar rejected a FWC recommendation to offer a 21.33% pay rise over four years, workers at its Queensland mills have narrowly voted up a three-year deal providing a 16% increase, plus a $2500 sign-on sweetener.
The FWC says it suspended certain ETU work bans on NSW's power transmission network because Transgrid "clearly established" the action threatened lives, safety, health or welfare, but the union is celebrating the rejection of the private operator's latest "substandard" offer.
Pay rises in private sector agreements eased in the March quarter and plummeted from an unusual spike in the public sector, according to DEWR's latest data.
Victoria's public sector nurses are set to decide whether to endorse a pay rise of 28% over four years after rejecting an earlier offer and closing hospital beds, while NSW nurses have handed the Minns Government a "business case" for a quick 15% uplift.
Unions NSW says that proposed base pay increases in this week's State budget amount to an "offer that workers and their unions can build on in bargaining" after the scrapping of public sector pay caps.
Master Builders Victoria has defended a new "industry template agreement" struck with the CFMEU, arguing it delivers simplified common clauses and "greater flexibility in engagement".
The Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association is at the pointy end of a bid for an intractable bargaining declaration to break an alleged "impasse" in negotiations on behalf of Qantas engineers in Tamworth, with the Flying Kangaroo and the union due to report back to the FWC this morning.
The FWC has urged the Defence Department to send "an authorised and properly instructed representative" to deadlocked bargaining negotiations at the Australian Submarine Corporation.
