The Federal Government will have to compromise on its plan for lawyer-free unfair dismissal conferences, while key Forward With Fairness policy questions still unanswered include how the safety net will be adjusted and how the Fair Work Australia one-stop shop will work, according to University of Adelaide's Professor Andrew Stewart.
Workplace Ombudsman Nick Wilson has outlined measures that could improve his ability to enforce compliance by employers in a speech to the NT IR Society in Darwin.
In what is thought to be the first substantive judgment under the Independent Contractors Act, the Federal Magistrates Court has today found that it was unfair for a principal to require that three independent contractor owner-drivers substantially upgrade the truck they were obliged to provide.
As the state IR ministers meet with Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard in Sydney today, the Queensland Government has made it clear that it will not decide until the middle of next year whether it will participate in the Rudd Government’s proposed national IR system and what form that participation will take.
Clayton Utz partner Graham Smith has today called on the Federal Government to abandon plans to set up Fair Work Australia, and instead retain the AIRC and beef-up its powers.
Rio train driver ballot application withdrawn; No nasty surprises in substantive legislation, FWA not the IR club, says Gillard; AWU celebrates 100 years of the Federated Ironworkers Association; and Huge membership rise in west, says construction union.
It would be "incomprehensible" to jettison the NSW IR system unless there was a better one to replace it - and no credible commentator had suggested there was, according to the President of the NSW IRC, Justice Roger Boland.
In a landmark decision for local government, the Federal Court has found that a Queensland council is not and cannot be a constitutional corporation, putting it out of reach of federal IR laws based on the constitution's corporations power.
A timber worker told to choose between his job and his daughter has won an apology plus almost $40,000 compensation from his employer, after he was denied leave at short notice to take his sick four-year-old to hospital with what turned out to be a life-threatening illness.
