The federal government has dumped its right of entry provisions and again baulked at expanding access to arbitration for greenfields bargaining and intractable disputes, in changes it today agreed to make to its Fair Work Amendment Bill to win cross-bench support.
Uncertainty remains over whose idea it was to appoint two new vice presidents to the Fair Work Commission, following a Senate Estimates hearing last night.
The ACTU's flagged multi-million-dollar IR advertising campaign begins tonight, with the first of its television commercials to run nationwide during the high-rating State of Origin rugby league game.
Shadow Workplace Relations Minister Senator Eric Abetz late this afternoon tabled in a Senate estimates hearing a letter sent by former Deputy Prime Minister – and now Prime Minister – Julia Gillard to the ACTU in April 2010 warning it of the legal risks of a proposal for compulsory arbitration of disputes under enterprise agreements.
Employer bodies have again failed to convince the Fair Work Commission to differentiate between modern awards in its annual wage review, with the tribunal's minimum wage panel highlighting legislative and practical factors in favour of maintaining a uniform approach.
The CFMEU's construction and general division Victorian branch and six organisers and delegates have been fined a total of $115,000 for coercing a major construction company to reinstate an employee by taking unlawful strike action across five separate building sites.
The ACTU says it is stunned that despite the Fair Work Commission's minimum wage panel acknowledging that wage inequality is rising in Australia, it has done "absolutely nothing" to deal with it in today's annual review decision.
The Fair Work Commission's minimum wage panel has decided to increase all award rates of pay by 2.6% in its 2013 annual wage review ruling, handed down today.
The prices and income accord would not have proceeded without then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, former Hawke Government IR Minister Ralph Willis has told a Macquarie University seminar to acknowledge its 30th anniversary.
