Fair Work Australia has declined to approve an enterprise agreement after finding the employer could unilaterally change the content of a HR manual to reduce employees' entitlements to allowances and public holiday pay rates.
Employers must give each individual employee a notice of representational rights, Fair Work Australia has ruled, casting doubt on an earlier decision that the notices could be distributed by more general means such as noticeboards.
The first Fair Work agreements approved by the independent umpire in the three months to September 30 last year provided average pay rises of 3.5% a year, while greenfields deals under the new Act paid 4.3%, according to new DEEWR data.
A court has found that IT giant Unisys repudiated a highly-paid executive's employment contract when it unilaterally demoted him to a new role, but has refused his $175,000 severance claim.
The MUA and offshore oil and gas vessel operator Total Marine Services have reached in-principle agreement on a new pay deal, in a move likely to open the floodgates to a wave of agreements in the sector.
Apology for disruption to Workplace Express publishing; Funding boost to help older blue-collar workers change jobs; Pluto strike over; Retailers welcome award changes; FWA right on dispute resolution and arbitration, says AIER; and Updated addresses for FWA and its members.
The ACTU has urged striking employees on the Pluto LNG project to return to work, but has criticised Woodside's handling of the dispute and called on it to withdraw "heavy-handed" threats of legal action against individual workers.
Federal Labor's good faith bargaining laws have the potential to help deliver a more sophisticated, less confrontational approach to collective bargaining in Australia, but guidance is lacking on how they are meant to operate, according to a leading IR academic.
A Fair Work Australia full bench has rejected an employers' "technical and pedantic" challenge to an AMWU protected action ballot, saying that in most cases the drafting of ballot questions will be a matter for the party seeking them.
The CFMEU's WA branch could come under intense scrutiny in coming months, with Woodside launching legal action against the union over its alleged role in the ongoing strike at the Pluto LNG project, the ABCC investigating the dispute and the FWO looking into potentially unlawful conduct in WA's North-West.
