National Cabinet has today decided against reducing isolation periods for coronavirus-positive workers from seven days to five, while it has also abandoned plans to allow under-18s to drive forklifts, as governments continue to discuss ways to ameliorate worker shortages in the supply chain.
The FWC has "reluctantly" applied the brakes to the NSW Government's COVID-19 vaccination mandate for some rail workers after finding it has an obligation to consider two unions' post-implementation challenges to the policy.
Unions are threatening to walk off jobs that risk the safety of essential workers, after what they claim is the Morrison Government's refusal to cooperate on the workplace response to the Omicron strain of COVID-19 and amid a continuing dire shortage of one of the "basic" frontline tools - Rapid Antigen Tests.
Workers across a range of critical industries will be permitted to attend work despite being close contacts of a COVID-19 case, once they receive a negative rapid antigen test result, following a national cabinet decision today, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The FWC has declined to extend time for an unvaccinated worker who claimed he lodged his claim late because of the theft of 45 one-kilogram silver bars from his home, while it has upheld a nursing home's sacking of a maintenance manager who failed to comply with a State Government inoculation mandate.
A senior FWC member has invited "relevant authorities" to investigate a potentially fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificate supplied to an employer by a worker claiming to have been unlawfully stood down.
BHP says it will ask 35 Mt Arthur coal mine workers why it should not sack them if they continue to defy its vaccination mandate after engaging in a fresh FWC-assisted consultation process.
The Federal Court has today refused the TWU's bid for reinstatement of some 2000 ground-handling workers who had their jobs outsourced by the airline at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
A paramedic who claims an Ambulance Victoria IR strategist refused to permit her to take long service leave while she waits for the non-MRNA Novavax has failed to obtain interim orders stopping it from dismissing her while she participates in a group challenge to its vaccine mandate.
BHP says it is working with the FWC and the CFMMEU's mining and energy division on further workplace consultation to enable the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccination mandate at its Mt Arthur coal mine in the Upper Hunter Valley.
