The mining and resource sector is stepping up its campaign against Labor's plans to scrap AWAs, with a new report saying a form of statutory individual contract must be retained, that common law contracts are an unworkable alternative, and that Labor's proposed transitional arrangements could create sovereign risk.
Union PR specialists Essential Media Communications has significantly increased leave and training provisions in a new collective agreement with the MEAA.
The Senate Economics Committee inquiring into the Family First party's Qantas Sale (Keep Jetstar Australian) Amendment Bill has recommended parliament reject it as unnecessary because the protections it seeks are already provided by the Air Navigation Act and the takeover consortium APA's Deed of Undertaking to the Federal Government.
A High Court majority has today upheld the right of employers to opt out of state workers' compensation schemes if they are eligible to self-insure under Comcare.
The Federal Government's independent contractor laws add another layer of complexity to the workplace relations system, significantly reduce the levels of legal protection available to contractors, and fail to address an issue of fundamental concern to labour regulation, according to Monash University's Dr Anthony Forsyth.
Greens MPs in state and territory parliaments are planning to push Labor governments to effectively remove employers' ability to take common law action against employees and unions over industrial action.
A full bench of the AIRC is today hearing a bid by Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey to have overturned an earlier finding that the Victorian State Library's sacking of an employee amounted to a dispute with the CPSU over the application of an agreement and was within the Commission's jurisdiction.
Some 11,000 Qantas customer service, administration and IT employees will be seeking a 6% annual pay rise, 12% super contributions and maintenance of award conditions in an enterprise bargaining claim expected to be served on the airline by the ASU this month, ahead of the April 3 deadline for shareholders to accept a buyout by the APA private equity consortium.
A Hunter Valley mining contractor has agreed to pay compensation and legal costs to a 21-year-old trainee truck driver who alleges she was bullied, harassed and then dismissed when she refused to sign an AWA last year.
