In what appears to be a significant win for IR certainty at Woodside, two unions have agreed in principle to a seven-year moratorium on unlawful industrial action on the company's Pluto LNG, Browse LNG and North West Shelf projects, in return for a major reduction in penalties being sought by construction companies against more than 1300 individual employees, and other concessions.
Productivity is not an abstract term to Australian workers, meaning instead “unpaid hours, phone calls out of work and doing more for less”, according to the ACTU Working Australia Census.
In a case that illustrates the difficulties even workplace regulators and educators have in negotiating IR laws, Fair Work Ombudsman Nick Wilson has been obliged to provide an undertaking to Fair Work Australia to clear the way for the approval of his organisation's new three-year agreement.
The NSW Teachers Federation says members will defy IRC anti-strike orders secured by the Department of Education this afternoon and join tomorrow's rally by the State's public sector workers against the O'Farrell Government's wage-cap legislation - a protest now further fuelled by the job cuts announced in yesterday's Budget.
The ABCC has secured its second successful sham contracting prosecution, bringing to only three the number of cases proven under the Workplace Relations or Fair Work Acts.
Productivity has stagnated or gone backwards for the past year while real labour costs have either been flat or increased over the same period, according to ABS data released today. Meanwhile, the RBA Governor has this morning said that he wasn't calling for employees to work longer hours in recently pushing for a new focus on productivity improvement.
A Fair Work Australia full bench majority has today refused a bid to have pilots employed by NZ-based Qantas subsidiary JetConnect regulated by Australian IR laws, while the minority has found that the operation is covered by the airline’s short haul pilots' award.
Fair Work Australia has come to the "tentative view" that it has no power to direct the Australian Electoral Commission to use a particular voting method when conducting protected action ballots.
Ai Group chief executive Heather Ridout has today called for a raft of changes to the Fair Work Act, including the restoration of provisions from Work Choices and its predecessor legislation.
FWA amends rules; Government seeking feedback on "Dad and Partner" parental leave payments; Union protests not a secondary boycott, says ACCC; Union to seek authorisation for industrial action in Victorian public sector; ACTU demands PC remove IR chapter from final report; MUA official recognised for anti-violence message; and High Court article technical errors rectified.
