An Amazon Flex driver's late bid to challenge his deactivation for entering a home can proceed after a FWC full bench weighed the gig company's "confusing and ambiguous" communications and the driver's personal circumstances that included suicidal ideation and a sick wife.
Employers and unions are urging the FWC in its self-initiated test case to insert WFH provisions in the clerks award, but are starkly divided on whether workers should have a right to request, while academics back extending it to all – with protections – to boost equity.
In a case highlighting the "obvious danger" of relying on artificial intelligence for legal advice, the FWC has refused to extend time for a "hopeless" 900-day late dismissal challenge written by and filed on the suggestion of ChatGPT.
The Albanese Government should collaborate with business groups and unions to establish an independent digital and AI transition body charged with preventing workers being left behind, according to a Jobs and Skills Australia report suggesting the changes are more likely to "augment" jobs than take them over.
A labour law academic says there is a need to ask how Australia's IR system is so "fundamentally broken" that it incentivises the conduct evident in Qantas's decision to unlawfully outsource jobs to avoid bargaining, in circumstances where the record $90 million fine imposed yesterday will barely dent its resultant annual savings.
The FWC is inviting quick submissions in its crucial work from home test case ahead of a directions hearing pushed back to September 5, after providing data underpinning WFH research criticised by the Australian Industry Group, while Victoria is consulting on WFH legislation to be introduced next year.
A self-represented Uber driver has fired back at attempts by the rideshare company to have the FWC throw out the first substantive test of its new unfair contracts powers, arguing that his application is based not on "desired terms or speculative grievances" but on "realworld" experience.
The Productivity Commission is urging parliamentarians to pause and potentially ditch moves to mandate guardrails for "high-risk AI", flying in the face of the recommendations of a government department and a union push for pre-agreed employment safeguards.
The FWC has pointed to a Victoria Police branch's brush with the "red line threshold" for public sector service delivery as reinforcing the business case for rejecting a prosecutor's request to work from home on Mondays.
A Metcash coordinator working from home since she started her job during the coronavirus pandemic has won rare flexibility orders requiring the distribution giant to exempt her from a directive to return to the office, so she can minimise risks for her child with cystic fibrosis.
