Following on from its wins at Sydney and Melbourne independent bookstores, RAFFWU is leading strikes and work bans at Berkelouw Books and Harry Hartog, where it says workers remain on a small-cohort 2012 "zombie" agreement that the union says pays "poverty wages" and should never have been approved.
The author of a book tracing 150 years of campaigning for a shorter Australian working week says it offers crucial lessons for current efforts to win a four-day work week, cut unpaid overtime, and properly account for domestic labour, while AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy considers it part of a "just transition".
In an "industry-first", a newly-approved union agreement covering editorial employees at news publications including Crikey and The Mandarin explicitly prohibits AI from replacing human employees and requires all output to have human oversight.
A PSA South Australia industrial officer who claimed the union decided against extending her contract because she complained about a bullying colleague has lost her adverse action claim.
FWC general manager Murray Furlong has called for major construction companies to start playing their part in stamping out corruption in the industry, while the Wood inquiry will this week hear evidence from leaders of the AWU's Queensland branch and the Queensland Council of Unions.
The FWC has approved the amalgamation of the Australian Retailers Association and National Retail Association to form the Australian Retail Council, which will employ their combined heft in seeking to reduce members' compliance burden and holding overseas platforms to account.
As the Albanese Government revealed plans for an AI Safety Institute to harness productivity gains and combat "malign uses" of the new technology, a "confronting" report from the FSU champions the need for a digital "just transition" amid concerns about job security and surveillance in the finance sector.
Former CFMEU construction and general division Queensland branch leaders Michael Ravbar and Jade Ingham directed membership payments to the state-registered union rather than the federally-registered entity, leaving members without voting power, in a move that might have been intended to "create an impregnable fiefdom into which the national organisation could not reach", administrator Mark Irving KC said today.
The UWU says it has won pay rises of up to $30,000 a year for nearly 700 on-hire warehouse workers through five same-job, same-pay applications tellingly unresisted by employers, while the SDA is now embedding SJSP clauses in its supply chain agreements.
The Federal Court has temporarily restrained a trustee from winding up a purported income protection fund that a FWC full bench found had paid the UFU a $1.6 million "secret commission".
