Amidst the current round of job shedding, companies - many of which have just come out of a skills shortage - are also looking at other means of reducing labour costs during the global financial crisis, though not always in ways approved of by unions. Workplace Express today looks at downtime in the car industry; shorter hours in components manufacturing; EDS's proposed pay cuts; Medibank Private's bid to make full-time work part-time; and requests from WA companies to "do an Alcoa".
We won't give Labor carte blanche on IR, says Keenan; No appeals on 100 employees exemption: AIRC; WA CSA organiser wins top ACTU gong; Appeal court overturns $70K defamation payout to nurses' union leader; Justice Schmidt declines to stand aside from OHS prosecution; MBA defends Cole Royal Commission; and New book on Fair Work laws.
The Federal Court has found the CFMEU guilty of contempt for defying a court order requiring it to stop blocking access to the New Royal Children's Hospital building site in Melbourne.
The ACTU will launch legal action to have the Liberal National Party in Queensland withdraw an advertisement that it says copies the colours, style and even slogan of the Your Rights at Work campaign.
A NSW public hospital victimised a nurse when it tried to teach her a lesson by rostering her for shifts in a locked psychiatric ward after she made an internal discrimination complaint, a tribunal has found in the latest round of a long-running case.
A record fine imposed on Perth builder Gerry Hanssen for breaching AWA lodgement rules has been massively reduced after the Federal Court ruled he did not exploit the workers.
In what is believed to be the first judgment imposing a penalty for breaching the Workplace Relations Act's s448 prohibition on discriminating against employees for taking industrial action, the Federal Magistrates Court has ordered Austral Bricks to pay $3,300 to the CFMEU.
The AWU has reversed falling membership levels in several of its branches through a new national organising strategy being rolled out across the union.
Real unit labour costs and productivity dropped as the economy recorded its first quarter of negative growth since 1991, according to national accounts data released today. The statistics also mark the reversal of a recent trend of an increasing share of the economic cake going to profits and a record low to wages.
ACTU tells business: Obey IR laws or lose corporate welfare; Family First bill to make executives planning redundancies pay back bonuses; Do's and Don'ts of downsizing; CFMEU, organiser, fined a total of $23,500; and Barklamb leaving ACCI for job in Geneva.
