The biggest mover on Labor's same-job, same-pay laws is using the Closing Loopholes review to call for a major expansion to include parity of conditions for on-hire workers, while capturing associated entities and tightening the exemption for service providers.
The mother of a young child had "understandable" reasons for wanting to make her part-time job completely remote so her partner could take up better opportunities interstate, but the FWC has found insufficient connection between her caring duties and her job to empower it to arbitrate the flexible work dispute.
Employment law experts are urging employers to tread carefully in dealing with workers' increasing use of AI to make flexibility requests, respond to investigations and lodge complaints.
The Albanese Government has retreated from proposed mandatory "guardrails" in its national AI policy released today, relying instead on existing regulators to report any legislative gaps to the newly-formed AI Safety Institute.
Unions have doubled down on objections to an Australian Industry Group draft working-from-home clause proposed for the clerks award, claiming it will create a two-tiered system, confound both employers and workers and violates new penalty rates protections.
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.
The case billed as the first substantive test of the FWC's new gig economy unfair contracts powers has been quietly binned, after a self-represented Uber driver discontinued it earlier this month.
As a leading employer-clientele lawyer hosed down fears about WFH "chaos" in the wake of the recent Chandler decision, the Greens have introduced legislation giving employees the right to work remotely for at least two days a week unless fulfilling their roles is "impractical or impossible".
A FWC full bench has today rejected a bid by BHP Coal and its OS entities to issue highly-specific, restrictive orders to give effect to July's landmark same-job, same-pay decision for the resource giant's Bowen Basin coal mines, warning that the proposed descriptions of those covered could undermine the scheme's purpose and be "swiftly evaded".
