A wide range of building industry participants will be eligible to apply to have coercive powers switched off on their projects, but fewer may be able to succeed, under new IR regulations flagged by Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard.
Employers in the past year have granted almost 70% of employee bids for flexibility and rejected 10%, ahead of employees next year gaining legislative backing for their right to make such requests, according to University of SA researchers.
Climate change creates a "whole new possibility" for worker mobilisation, says Pocock; TWU to bargain for SA milk vendors; Obama announces new Equal Employment Opportunity Chair; US federal minimum wage increases today; BA pilots agree to pay cut; Health care, environment sectors will drive US labour market: report; Amendment to restriction on re-hiring of redundant parliamentary staff; Bendigo Bank proceeding with unpaid leave plan; and Changes to article on FWA conciliators
Virgin Blue has informed its cabin crew that if they vote down a proposed enterprise agreement a second time in a ballot that closes Sunday, it will seek to terminate the nominally-expired deal that regulates their wages and conditions and move rapidly to implement the key hours and rostering changes it wants.
The AMWU and AWU have put aside traditional hostilities to form a manufacturing alliance to push for measures - including local sourcing on infrastructure projects and assistance for employers to train workers facing retrenchment - to protect the sector from further job losses. The two unions will vote together on manufacturing resolutions at next week's ALP national conference.
A law firm has been ordered to pay a former client $45,000 after it failed to tell him of an offer it had received from his ex-employer to settle an ongoing employment dispute.
The CFMEU (construction and general division) and the Leighton Kumagai Joint Venture have settled their legal dispute over strikes that hampered work on the Perth-Mandurah railway project in 2005 and 2006.
First general protections case begins before FWA; Labor promises inquiry into income security and job protection; and UK's Brown Government inquiry pushes for better engagement of employees.
Fair Work Australia now has a total of 24 full-time conciliators who will deal primarily with unfair dismissal claims - eight each in Sydney and Melbourne, three in Brisbane, two in Adelaide and Perth, and one in Hobart.
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.
