The federal ALP has a real opportunity to develop a national IR framework that could survive future changes of government and end the instability that results from the constant rewriting of IR laws, according to Griffith University's Professor David Peetz.
An employer who dropped his trousers and discussed sexual matters at work has been ordered to pay $3,000 to compensate a female marketing employee for offence and embarrassment.
The ALP campaigned on getting rid of Work Choices if elected, but this did not reflect its IR policy documents and therefore posed the question of whether the party was "going to commit perhaps the greatest ever fraud on the Australian electorate", according to former Slater & Gordon principal lawyer and unsuccessful Greens candidate, Adam Bandt.
BHP Billiton has rejected claims by the AWU that it is trying to "bribe" workers at its Cannington mine in western Queensland by offering them a $10,000 bonus for signing five-year AWAs before they are scrapped by the ALP early next year.
AWA lodgements surged to a new high in November, seemingly lending credence to union claims that employers are rushing to lock in the individual deals before the Rudd Government abolishes them. The flood of AWAs has worsened the Workplace Authority's backlog, which has now reached almost 150,000 agreements and on current trends won't be cleared until at least the third quarter of 2008.
Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard will meet with leading union and employer representatives next week to discuss the Government's IR transition bill expected in Parliament in February.
More than six months after the fairness test took effect, the Workplace Authority has today released the first 50 of hundreds of collective agreements to undergo it.
Australians should look to Tony Blair's Britain to understand the thinking of new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is "not that interested" in IR and wants to by-pass it on the way to a new era of citizenship at work, according to leading IR academic, Professor Ron McCallum.
The Workplace Relations Minister when Work Choices was introduced, Kevin Andrews, has been dropped from the Coalition front bench, while Liberal Party Deputy Leader and Shadow Workplace Relations Minister Julie Bishop will now also be in charge of the business and employment portfolios - but it will be Victorian Liberal Tony Smith, promoted from parliamentary secretary, who will take on Labor's Julia Gillard in the education portfolio.
