The employer group that lobbied hardest against the ALP's plans to abolish AWAs - the AMMA - now says that reviving statutory individual contracts "may not be necessary" if the Rudd Government's common law contracts stream proves a workable alternative.
Unions feared there would be a rush to lodge AWAs before they disappeared permanently from the IR landscape on March 28, but the surge never eventuated, according to data released by the Workplace Authority today. However, the backlog of Work Choices agreements remains a considerable problem, with 150,000 yet to be finalised - a job likely to take at least six months.
NSW unions will re-mobilise their powerful Your Rights at Work grassroots network to campaign for the Rudd Government to introduce 28 weeks paid maternity leave. They will also push the State ALP to adopt the maternity policy at its conference this weekend.
The Workplace Authority has published a new 40-page policy guide to agreement-making and the no-disadvantage test under the Labor Government's transitional IR laws.
The AIRC's President, Justice Geoffrey Giudice, has today released a draft list of 19 priority industries for the award modernisation process, two draft model award flexibility clauses and a proposed timetable for completing the priority modern awards. In a statement on the first major phase of the award modernisation process, he has also announced the dates on which the Commission will sit to consult on those drafts, which he said were "a starting point".
Award modernisation will involve "starting from scratch" rather than dragging prescriptive and unwieldy old awards "kicking and screaming" into the 21st Century, Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard told a conference in Sydney today.
New ABS data released today indicates a smaller proportion of employees were entitled to paid parental leave in October last year than a year earlier. The new survey coincides with the St Vincent de Paul opportunity shop chain in NSW offering 14 weeks paid maternity leave to its 400 employees and a new study showing that breastfeeding suffers when mothers return to work in the first six months after having a baby.
Workers at Boeing subsidiary Hawker de Havilland returned to work at the company's Fishermens Bend site this morning, ending a three-week strike over the dismissal of a supervisor.
Company director guilty by omission, court finds; Community radio station a trading corporation, says IRC; and ABCC seeks to cancel entry permit of CFMEU NSW branch organiser.
An AIRC full bench has sidestepped the Federal Court full bench's TWU judgment, in rejecting arguments that an order to halt industrial action was too broad, vague and general and failed to give proper notice to employees.
