It was the "blue flue" in the WA construction sector, and now the "Chinese flu" has kept freight train drivers off the job in Victoria. To FWA, however, the latest outbreak was part of coordinated and collective conduct that amounted to industrial action.
A court has fined the owners of a Hobart security company $136,000 after finding they continued to lease luxury cars while repeatedly failing to pay penalties and allowances to their low-paid employees over a two-year period.
A Fair Work Australia full bench has ruled that preferred hours clauses used by aged care and retail employers would have disadvantaged employees, but has quashed on procedural grounds two earlier decisions rejecting the clauses.
The AEU has described as "extremely disappointing" today's meeting between federal and state education ministers, maintaining the latter "publicly fell in line behind the DPM" over the union's threatened boycott of the NAPLAN test - now the subject of an FWO investigation and state IRC proceedings.
In a significant ruling on the Fair Work Act's new scope order provisions, a Fair Work Australia full bench has ruled that Melbourne's firefighters should be covered by three separate agreements, despite employees – including senior officers – backing the union push for a single deal.
A new Treasury research paper backs up what has long been the common wisdom - that a rise in child care costs leads to working mothers dropping out of employment, cutting their hours and reducing their utilisation of formal child care.
Employers are increasingly making undertakings in a bid to have agreements approved, but senior IR lawyers have raised concerns about a lack of consistency and transparency in the way Fair Work Australia is dealing with the practice.
