The magistrate who will decide whether construction worker Ark Tribe unlawfully refused to attend a compulsory interview has postponed his verdict, while the ABCC has reported a sharp rise in sham contracting investigations.
The NSW Court of Appeal has upheld the validity of non-solicitation clauses that restrained two executives for 12 months after termination of their employment contracts.
Fair Work Australia has approved an agreement for Qantas’s main external supplier of casual flight attendants, but only after rejecting an employee's claim that she would be disadvantaged.
A Fair Work Australia finding that the FWO incorrectly advised hospitality employers on their award obligations has highlighted employer group calls for a mechanism to provide binding interpretations on difficult award issues.
The nation's chambers of commerce and a number major industry groups say significant changes are needed to improve the operation of the Fair Work system and that it is "wholly unrealistic" for Labor or the Coalition to rule out amending the laws.
The FWO has been described as the most energetic IR enforcement agency Australia has had and its statistics for 2009-10 bear that out, with its information line taking 1.1m calls; its online tools attracting 370,000 downloads; and its inspectors recouping $26.1m in underpayments and launching 53 prosecutions - including its first for pregnancy discrimination under the Fair Work Act.
AMMA has called for significant changes to good faith bargaining laws that include giving employers the right to know how many and which employees a union it is bargaining with represents and to make non-union greenfields deals.
The CFMEU has elected forestry and furnishing products division secretary Michael O'Connor to run its national office, while the CEPU's communication division has appointed Queenslander Cameron Thiele as its national secretary.
