The FWO is demonstrating an "appropriately cautious" approach to pursuing employers under new wage theft laws, the Closing Loopholes review has found, while a senator has separately told a parliamentary inquiry that the bar for prosecution might be too high.
A court has ordered the FWO to pay costs for its "very late" and unexplained abandonment of an underpayments case, while highlighting its failure to "grapple" with the case's underlying problems.
The FWC has acceded to BHP's request for it to bring almost 140 of its BHP OS on-hire workers in-house, to reduce the workload involved with managing multiple enterprise agreements and address "the potential for disharmony in the workforce".
In what the NTEU has called a "new low" in tertiary education sector underpayment cases, Torrens University is seeking permission from the High Court to challenge last month's full court finding that casual academics should be paid for marking assessments not directly related to particular lectures or tutorials.
A full Federal Court has confirmed that class actions cannot start until members are correctly identified but can "transmogrify", after Adero Law conceded the definition contained in a store managers' claim against The Reject Shop left the group "empty".
Adero Law says a class action accusing Kmart of failing to pay salaried managers for actual hours worked, including while at home, will test whether it has "adopted in practice" lessons drawn from underpayments cases targeting Coles and Woolworths.
The scope of "same-job, same-pay" orders should replicate the host deal's, according to an employment and IR barrister who is urging the Albanese Government to plug a "leaking bucket", following a full court finding that the FWC should have confined its orders to a more limited cohort of on-hire workers at a Hunter Valley coal mine.
FWC-ordered minimum wage increases play a "critical role" in "reducing entrenched, intersectional wage inequality" for Aboriginal workers, who are more likely to be award-reliant, the Centre for Indigenous People and Work says in what is likely the first annual wage review submission to focus solely on First Nations workers.
The ACTU is seeking a 5% rise in award rates and the federal minimum wage to keep pace with cost-of-living pressures "that have gotten a lot tougher" with the fuel price rises from the Middle East war and interest rate hikes.
