The FWO has established a panel of aged care industry employers and unions to oversee what it calls a "collective approach" to policing the sector as it continues a crackdown on facilities, home care providers and gig platforms that underpaid workers at least $40 million last financial year.
Platform companies, gig workers and unions will be able to apply to the NSW IRC for determinations on conditions and pay for the first time under legislation to be introduced by the Minns Government today, but Uber is calling for "further scrutiny".
The FWO has published a guide to the newly-declared voluntary code for small businesses - said to be a blueprint for employers of all sizes - to protect themselves from criminal liability under Closing Loopholes wage theft provisions from January 1.
The FWO has further tightened the screws on franchisors after the Federal Court agreed that it fell to Bakers Delight to disprove that it is liable for half of a liquidated franchisee's alleged underpayments of more than $1.2 million.
The NTEU is calling for the FWO's "anti-wage theft model" to be rolled out nationally, after Sydney University entered an enforceable undertaking to make up more than $23 million in underpayments to more than 14,000 workers and Melbourne University did the same, for denying more than 25,000 workers a total of $72 million.
The Federal Court has approved a $19.25 million settlement to an underpayments class action targeting Justin Hemmes' Merivale, boosted from an earlier agreed sum of $18 million.
A full bench comprising the FWC's three most senior members has made same-job, same-pay orders that will increase wages for one labour supplier's workers at a Queensland meatworks by about 25% and provide "significantly higher rates" for a second supplier's workers at the same workplace.
The Federal Court has imposed a record penalty on a sushi restaurant chain to "disabuse" employers of the notion that penalties for underpayments are "an acceptable cost of doing business" and recommended that the Fair Work Ombudsman refer its chief executive's potential flouting of tax and migration laws to the ATO, Department of Home Affairs and ASIC.
After Woolworths again delayed backpaying short-changed distribution centre workers, the FWC has recommended the supermarket giant "do all that is necessary to ensure" it pays affected SDA members at the Brisbane distribution centre, by the end of this month.
In a judgment that casts a harsh light on agreement drafting, a Federal Court majority has described crucial elements of a multinational paint company's since superseded deals as a "jumble of random terms", before quashing a finding that six misclassified warehouse workers had been underpaid.
