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.
The ETU's WA branch is pushing to bargain for a separate agreement for continuing electrical, instrumentation or plumbing workers at the massive Pluto 2 LNG expansion, to uncouple from employees who will be demobilised as the construction phase ends, and is urging workers to vote down a pay offer that "does not pass the pub test".
With the FWC seeking feedback by early next month on whether to hold off on reviewing its insertion of right to disconnect terms into awards, a leading employment and IR barrister and former critic of the legislation says the lack of test cases is "remarkable".
A leading employment and IR barrister says the four-day working week, working from home and the right to disconnect are part of an unavoidable reorganisation of working hours that is set to become "the big issue of our time".
A worker failed to provide evidence that demonstrated that she sought a compressed work week to care for her partner and grandson, and that those needs related to her age, the FWC has found, ruling her flexible work arrangement request invalid.
