Union calls for cooperative approach to ensure manufacturing's future; 2012 to bring new FWA President and “balance”, Opposition hopes; FWO investigation into nurses’ industrial action; despite lifting of bans; and Pause continues for child protection bans, but prison guards stopping work.
A Fair Work Australia full bench today proceeded with the first of three scheduled hearings of the SACS equal pay case despite requests from the Victorian Government and employer bodies to defer the matter until early December to give them more time to respond to the joint union/Federal Government submission lodged on November 17.
Industrial action by three unions and the grounding of its fleet last month has cost Qantas $194 million since July 1, the airline has told the Australian Stock Exchange this morning.
An insurance company that hired its sales representatives as independent contractors is now liable for their annual and long-service leave - in one instance accrued over more than 24 years - after the Federal Court ruled that they were in fact employees.
The Victorian Hospitals Association has successfully appealed against the s418 order made by Commissioner Suzanne Jones after arguing it left hospital employers with "difficulty and uncertainty" and failed to meet the objectives of the Fair Work Act.
Qantas-TWU arbitration to begin in March, pilots in April, as ALAEA asks members to consider status quo on job security; Greens bill to safeguard bargaining for job security; and University dismissal a "chilling warning".
FWA is likely to begin arbitrating an agreement between Qantas and the TWU in late March or early April, while the union today decided against mounting its own Federal Court challenge to the tribunal's termination of industrial action at the airline.
On the final parliamentary sitting day for the year, the Federal Government has introduced legislation to increase protection for TCF outworkers but its construction and paid parental leave bills look like being held over until 2012. Its coal industry superannuation legislation, meanwhile, was voted up last night.
A 2011 NSW state government policy that unilaterally forces redundancy on public sector employees who have been declared "excess" and strips them of the benefits they had been promised is unfair, NSW IRC President Justice Roger Boland has found.
