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.
An apprentice hairdresser who resigned over of her employer's reaction to her pregnancy has been awarded more than $11,000, with the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Tribunal finding she was effectively given the choice of keeping her job and being verbally abused, or leaving.
Wage growth in private sector agreements is yet to feel the effects of the global financial crisis, with increases remaining steady at 4.2% a year for the second quarter in a row, according to DEEWR data released today.
Assurances to a former Samsung corporate services manager that her fixed term job would be made permanent did not constitute an enforceable contract, the AIRC has ruled.
Small employers will be able to seek grants of up to $15,000 to develop and implement family friendly workplace policies, under a newly-launched federal government program.
The NSW Court of Appeal has ruled that a 30-month restraint imposed on a former executive with a financial services firm is reasonable and should not be overturned.
Coalition senators on the Fair Work Bill inquiry have acknowledged the Government's mandate for IR change and confined their criticism of the legislation to where they maintain it is flawed, unfair, or beyond Forward with Fairness, in a restrained dissenting report. The Labor senators, meanwhile, have recommended only technical amendments to the bill, while the Greens have argued for more substantial change.
