Dave the industrial chemist uses IFA to balance work/family, in FWO best practice guide; Full bench majority rejects union costs bid in Etheridge case; and Unions join with Australian Conservation Foundation in workplace-based climate campaign.
OneSteel gave an AMWU delegate a lawful and reasonable direction to remove a union sticker from his neck, a Federal Court full bench has found in rejecting an unlawful dismissal claim. And in other dismissal rulings, the AIRC has awarded an employee $4,000 in costs and upheld a rail employee's sacking for cheating in a test.
The equal opportunity agency has today launched a new tool kit to help employers audit pay equity, and the ACTU is launching a new Equal Pay Alliance that has written to Rudd Government ministers seeking action on gender pay inequity, ahead of tomorrow’s Equal Pay Day.
Australia has set a benchmark for the US in making IR reform a central plank of economic policy, according to President Barack Obama's labour advisor, Professor Tom Kochan, and other members of the American delegation to the World IR Congress.
Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard has responded to horticultural employers' concerns and directed the AIRC to allow flexible hours and casuals' piece rates to continue in the industry's new modern award. She has also varied her award modernisation request to acknowledge union concerns over in-house call centre workers' safety net, and asked the Commission to look at part-time penalty rates in the retail and pharmacy sectors.
University of Sydney Professor of Law Ron McCallum has predicted the ILO will find the Fair Work Act fails to comply with its freedom of association and collective bargaining conventions and says Australia in the long run won’t be able to ignore it, in a speech in which he also argued Australian labour law has had a long and continuing “obsession” with fairness.
Hydro Tasmania to fight ETU scope order bid; Dates set for Virgin Blue hearing; NUW seeks Federal Court backing for rule change; Opposition attacks Government over horticulture award; Hart throws hat into ring for Bradfield; and Programme set for construction hearings.
The Victorian Supreme Court has found a labour-hire company's restraint of trade provisions were excessively restrictive and has rejected its bid for an interlocutory injunction against a former employee.
Four in every ten manufacturers in Denmark have made enterprise deals that provide “win-win” flexible working hours arrangements, according to a visiting academic, but the emergence of “flexitime jealousy” has diverted union delegates in some workplaces into mediating disputes between workers with access to flexibility and those without.
CEPU members at Australia Post will vote in a protected action ballot in coming weeks, following a Fair Work Australia ruling yesterday that the union has dropped claims for prohibited content and is genuinely trying to reach agreement.
