The CEPU (communications division) will play a role in negotiating an enterprise agreement at Optus later this year, in yet another example of an employer changing its past IR practices to comply with the Fair Work Act.
Headline inflation plummets to 1.5%, but underlying inflation remains high; Virgin and cabin crew union meeting after FWA intervenes, but accord unlikely; Acts updated to include Fair Work changes; and John Holland fined $125,000 for safety breaches
The Federal Court has ruled that workers should have been given the opportunity to meet and discuss non-union collective agreements before voting on them, in a decision that could open the door for unions to challenge agreements approved during the last days of the Workplace Relations Act.
A tribunal has ordered KFC to pay a teenage worker $15,000 damages as compensation for sexual harassment by an assistant manager, who purred at her like a cat and asked her to swim nude with him at Sydney's Bondi Beach.
The Melbourne Magistrates Court has fined a car-washing and detailing business and its owner more than $200,000 for refusing to pay five casual employees for work they performed.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow has signalled unions might push for a European-style "flexicurity" system to protect workers' income security, saying it is no longer acceptable for workers on average earnings of $1,000 a week to be thrown out of work and forced to rely on unemployment benefits of just $220 a week.
Unions say they will seek to convince Fair Work Australia's minimum wages panel that new legislative objectives it must consider - such as social inclusion, relative living standards and the needs of the low-paid - open the way for it to set higher minima, increase casual loadings and boost conditions.
Victorian paramedics will consider taking unprotected industrial action after Fair Work Australia today terminated their right to take protected action and ordered that proposed four-hour stoppages not go ahead tomorrow.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has endorsed a model put forward by the Wilcox review for its oversighting of the Building Industry Inspectorate's coercive powers, but has called for more resources to enable it to properly perform the task.
