Gillard says statistics prove AWAs ripped off workers; Parliamentary library releases digests for transition bill and other IR legislation; Unfair dismissal law resembles decade-old Coalition model, says report; No nirvana for unions under Rudd’s Blairite model, says Lansbury; New Ronalds' guide to discrimination law; and Provide key details about jobs, or turn off jobseekers, says report.
ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence today argued that the Fair Pay Commission should not discount any increases in its forthcoming minimum wages determination against the Government's promised tax cuts, or any possible superannuation changes.
For the first time under Work Choices, a court has found an IR consultant jointly liable with an employer for applying duress to an employee to make an AWA.
A prominent Perth builder who exploited 15 vulnerable subclass 457 guest workers, mostly from the Philippines, when he deliberately breached AWA approval and lodgement obligations has been ordered to pay a record $174,000 in penalties.
The Senate committee inquiring into the ALP's transitional IR bill has until Monday to hand down its report after five days of hearings finished in Canberra today with evidence from DEEWR, in which it acknowledged there was no official "end point" for ITEAS or AWAs.
Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard has challenged the Opposition to pass the transitional IR legislation in the Senate next week, saying she is "concerned that their dithering and vacillating will mean that there is delay in dealing with this bill".
Queensland's peak union body has told the Senate inquiry into the transitional IR legislation that the AIRC should be able to maintain state-based differences in awards beyond the proposed 2013 deadline, while the state's peak employer group argued that a drafting anomaly means new agreements won't be able to contain career structures.
Union representatives on a committee considering the impacts of the NSW Government's plans to sell or lease power assets have today rejected the proposal, saying it shouldn't proceed because it is contrary to ALP policy.
The AIRC has the power to order state-registered unions not to take industrial action under s496 of the Workplace Relations Act, but the orders should be strongly based on evidence (including of union involvement) and notified in advance to affected employees, the Federal Court has ruled.
