An IR expert is anticipating a pre-election policy announcement tackling post-employment restraints, as new research reveals their chilling effect on job mobility, the financial toll on workers, and the struggle for those affected to understand and negotiate the restrictions.
The FWC has continued to update its information about employment law changes due to take effect next week, publishing new details about the Closing Loopholes No 2 Act impact on casuals, unfair contracts and gig workers.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke intends to amend the Closing Loopholes No 2 legislation so that "employee-like" workers in the gig economy and in road transport cannot "double-dip" in the federal and state IR systems.
A palliative care doctor given 10 minutes' notice that his three-year fixed-term contract was to be succeeded by a six-month contract immediately lost his right to have a tribunal review the new offer, Tasmania's Supreme Court has held.
The latest tranche of Macquarie Bank wealth advisors to sue for alleged underpayments continue to maintain they were paid under commission-only arrangements despite the bank's insistence this was paid on top of a base salary.
A former CSIRO marine biologist is seeking more than $250,000 in alleged underpayments as part of a sham contracting and "unjust enrichment" case challenging its part-time work arrangements and use of unpaid visiting scientists.
A court has held that BlueScope Steel repudiated the contracts of managerial employees by taking them off annualised salary arrangements under a 2015 Port Kembla steelworks rescue plan said to have cut their pay by more than $20,000.
A Sydney-based Canadian paid a regular monthly untaxed figure in US dollars by a Calgary-headquartered company for which he agreed to act as an independent contractor has had his unfair dismissal claim upheld, with the FWC finding he was not genuinely retrenched.
A small coach company that voluntarily repaid two drivers almost $44,000 after admitting underpaying them has been penalised a total of $168,300, despite a judge finding the breaches were a result of "clumsiness and inadvertence" rather than deliberate.
The FWO has dropped its case against Foodora over alleged sham contracts, bringing to a premature close what was anticipated to be a significant test of the gig economy's employment relationships in Australia.
