Coles and the SDA have agreed on a draft two-year deal that provides higher penalty rates, but has lower annual pay rises for workers who are already on elevated wage rates.
The ACTU's new economic manifesto reveals the movement as the latest convert to the anti-globalisation sentiment sweeping the world, with strengthened calls for a focus on 'buy Australian' policies.
The FWC has slammed an employer for "behaviour of the shabbiest type" when it "de-rostered" an employee and cancelled his 457 visa sponsorship application because he asked to be paid his minimum lawful entitlements.
The main protagonists have landed their last blows ahead of Sunday penalty rate cuts coming into effect this weekend, United Voice calling on restaurant and pub patrons to pressure bosses over whether they value their staff, while AiG insists that July 1's parallel "hefty" minimum wage rise not only sees workers better off, but saddles employers with bigger wage bills.
Just a week after RBA Governor Philip Lowe called for workers to push for bigger wage rises, the FWC has approved a deal that secures increases of just 2% a year for his own 1000-strong workforce, but with the prospect, for some, of also winning performance-based bonuses.
The National Farmers' Federation will argue the FWO has misconstrued the horticulture award's piecework provisions in a Federal Court case it believes has the potential to remove much of the incentive to work across the entire sector.
Two unions are poised to lodge legal challenges to penalty rate cuts as early as tomorrow after the Fair Work Commission issued determinations on transitional arrangements in the retail and hospitality sectors.
Maverick Federal Nationals MP George Christensen has this morning made good on his vow to introduce a private members' bill to stop Sunday penalty rates from being cut in 11 days' time.
Queensland employers facing millions of dollars in backpay claims are calling on the Federal Court to quash an FWC full bench decision that apprentices' pay should be measured against the more generous federal award rather than the state award when conducting the BOOT.
A Senate Committee's call for a target date for full gender pay equity has been seized upon by the union pursuing a four-year long equal-remuneration case before the FWC, but found little support from business or Government members on the Labor-dominated committee.
