Halliburton Australia's decision to terminate the services of an injured contract mining worker after less than a month's employment on probation was not discriminatory, a tribunal has found.
Qantas chief executive designate, Alan Joyce, who has headed subsidiary Jetstar since start-up, says he will continue the low-cost airline's model of directly engaging with employees when he takes over from incumbent Geoff Dixon.
nergex loses bid to stop ETU emergency work bans; Extra 86,000 workers needed by 2020 for minerals boom; Jetstar's Joyce to replace Dixon as Qantas chief executive; AFAP extends Virgin Blue coverage overseas; and Retailer backpays $247,000 to 173 staff after WO investigation.
A storeman sacked for calling a co-worker a "camel fucker" and a "wog" has lost his unfair dismissal claim in the AIRC, while his colleague who was sacked after laughing at the comments has won five weeks' pay.
While unions have given qualified support to the bulk of the Federal Government's proposed changes to the 457 visa laws, employer organisations have argued that the increased costs and obligations on businesses would discourage them from using the scheme and that the prohibition on using visa holders as strike-breakers raised serious legal difficulties.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow is calling for Labor to expand employees' right to request flexible work and to extend its proposed multi-employer bargaining system for low-paid employees. She is also urging a new approach to gender pay equity, noting that "inequity exists at all levels" and citing executive HR managers, where the gender gap is "a massive 43 per cent".
The CFMEU (construction division) has accused the MBAV's executive of hypocrisy after the employer organisation publicly criticised a new in-principle agreement for the Victorian construction sector that it had helped negotiate.
Some 8,000 Brisbane City Council workers will receive a 4.5% increase, under a one-year extension to the organisation's 2005-08 agreement with unions. The deal also changes procedures for dealing with employees who have recurrent sick leave absences.
Government subsidies may be contributing to escalating childcare costs, despite them having only a weak impact on increasing women's participation in the workforce, according to analysis by the Centre for Independent Studies.
