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.
In its first use of the new power to unilaterally amend the terms of substandard proposed agreements, the FWC has signalled it will rewrite provisions in three Aldi enterprise deals that leave storepersons worse off, to enable their approval.
Workers at Woodside's Pluto 2 LNG expansion in the Pilbara have overwhelmingly voted down head contractor Bechtel's proposed agreement, while Rio Tinto's Paraburdoo iron ore workers are set to receive a pay rise, announced shortly after unions kicked-off their majority support campaign.
The FWC has found a flexible working request invalid, because of its "tenuous" connection to the worker's caring responsibilities and the strain his absence would have imposed on other workers.
