A full Federal Court has confirmed that homecare, disability and social workers should not be paid penalty rates for shifts immediately before or after sleepovers, four months after the FWC made draft award variations that will achieve the opposite.
A court has fined Woolworths $233,250 for denying three part-time employees standard rosters, guaranteed hours and overtime pay, citing a lack of evidence "at the corporate mind level" and awarding the full sum to the AMIEU to encourage its enforcement work.
The National Employment Standards' weekly hours limit is incompatible with FIFO and 24/7 operations because of their reliance on averaged and extended shifts, and the "reasonableness" test is too burdensome, AREEA says in its submission to the NES inquiry.
A worker has been allowed to proceed with an out-of-time unfair dismissal application after his employer failed to tell him he had been taken off the roster, "dangled" the prospect of future shifts in front of him for almost a year, and led him to believe he remained on the books.
The FWC has upbraided an early learning facility for seeking to override a part-time employee's right to predictable hours that the employer found "commercially or operationally inconvenient".
Launceston Council's chief executive says he cannot thank the ASU enough for its role in negotiating an Australian-first in-principle deal enshrining a four-day work week with "five-day wages", further declaring that he would like the model enshrined in law "right across this country".
Qantas customer service airport workers, head office and call centre staff have voted up a deal delivering "well above" the Flying Kangaroo's wage cap policy, securing at least 5% in the first year alone plus "vital" job security protections, according to the ASU.
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".
The FWC's approach to assessing flexible work disputes is potentially undermining workers' rights to plan ahead, an academic has warned, after the tribunal held that a Sydney Water employee could not make such a request in the lead-up to his 55th birthday, and found a father ineligible until he finalised his custody arrangement.
The implications of the Federal Court's retail underpayments decision are only starting to be understood, with employment law academic Andrew Stewart warning of the significent consequences of its redefinition of employer record-keeping obligations and findings on proving workers' agreement to vary award conditions.
