Less than a month after Opposition Leader Tony Abbott came out in support of a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work", Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has defended Australia's comparatively high wage rates, saying there is no national benefit in cutting them.
A tribunal has ordered an employer to pay a low-paid shoe repairer $6,200 in damages for discriminating against her because she was a woman, following two earlier Federal Magistrates Court and SA IR Court decisions that awarded her more than $35,000 in compensation and penalties.
The Fair Work Commission has launched an inquiry into the NSW branch of the ETU over its alleged failure to disclose in its annual returns board positions held by current and former officers, an issue related to a renewed Federal Court proceedings brought by the Victorian branch.
The Fair Work Commission has approved a greenfields deal between the CFMEU and Mirvac Constructions but in doing so questioned whether a site rates provision it contains is a permitted matter and therefore enforceable.
The Victorian Supreme Court has rejected a former private school teacher's claim for damages based on his heavy workload, finding that he had no contractual entitlement to maximum face-to-face teaching in his AWAs or letter of appointment.
The Federal Court has issued a wide-ranging injunction against three unions and six union officials at Laing O'Rourke's troubled M&A project in Fortitude Valley, finding a serious issue to be tried that they breached the Fair Work Act and secondary boycott laws by pressuring sub-contractors not to work outside ordinary hours.
A senate inquiry into harmonisation of federal anti-discrimination laws has recommended the Government strip a draft bill of a controversial definition of unfavourable treatment to avoid unintended consequences, while the Coalition has blasted the bill as "impossibly wide and dangerously vague", warning it will foster a "culture of complaint".
In the first full bench ruling on what constitutes an "arrangement" connecting old and new employers under the Fair Work Act's transfer of business provisions, a publican has established that he had no understanding with the former operator of a hotel.
