The FWC has refused to approve a Subway franchisee's proposed deal designed to replace a zombie agreement, finding it not genuinely agreed because the employer failed to adequately explain which allowances would be absorbed into the rate of pay, and that penalty and minimum rates would freeze for the life of the agreement.
Perth-based IR managers are typically attracting a $20,000 annual premium over their counterparts in Sydney and Melbourne, according to recruitment company Hays' latest salary survey.
Low Pay Commission research has found that Government policies have driven the UK minimum wage's "bite" of the median up by 9.3 percentage points, while Australia's has increased by less than 0.1 percentage points since 2015, with next month's 9.8% wage floor rise in the old country to bring the minimum up to two-thirds of the median wage.
The Minns Labor Government has introduced IR changes that "remove the power to cap wages for good" and replace it with a "mutual gains bargaining" system, while also boosting the NSW IRC's powers and restoring it as an integrated court and tribunal.
Award wage increases have responded to rather than contributed to higher price inflation, and although the tight labour market has brought higher pay growth, it is "not enough to be a threat to slowing price inflation", according to a leading labour market economist.
The RBA says several new early indicators it has developed in-house are helping it to build a "fuller view" of wage movements ahead of the release of official figures.
The Australian Public Service Commission has tabled a revised APS pay offer that lifts total increases from 10.5% over three years to 11.2% and makes a 2.29% "re-alignment payment" for employees in some agencies as part of a shift to service-wide common dates for wage rises.
The Remuneration Tribunal has awarded a 4% pay rise for federal parliamentarians and the most senior public servants after noting that increases awarded over the past decade had been "conservative", including zero in 2020 and 2021 and 2.75% last year.
