Private sector rates of pay increased to 3.8% annually in the March quarter, up from 3.6% in the previous three-month period, according to the ABS, but relatively weak public sector rises have restricted the economy-wide movement to 3.6% in trend terms, about half the rate of inflation.
New NSW Labor upper house member and former IR academic Sarah Kaine has used her inaugural parliamentary speech to decry the "cult of individualism" that has led to the loss of labour market safety nets, while hailing the recent political shift towards restoring workplace "dignity".
The WA Court of Appeal has thrown out a nursing assistant's challenge to a judge's rejection of her $750,000 defamation claim, which she brought against her employer because a registered nurse accused her of saying "I hate working with Africans".
The Australian Public Service Commission has tabled its APS-wide pay offer which provides for total increases of 10.5% over three years, just over half the claim made by the Community and Public Sector Union.
The TWU plans to run work-values cases in the FWC seeking to "substantially lift" pay and conditions in three key aviation awards, with a longer-term view to using multi-employer bargaining in the sector.
A new research paper claims that multi-employer bargaining in the air-conditioning manufacturing industry could force low-productivity companies to collapse and reduce mid-performing companies' profits.
AWU national secretary Daniel Walton is stepping down after almost seven years, announcing his departure at the same time as pressuring the Albanese Labor Government to promote domestic manufacturing by introducing an export tax on unprocessed critical minerals.
In a rare instance of the "power imbalance" between employer and employee being reversed, the FWC has found that a worker hired to help a migrant family earn a business visa by running a regional bakery unilaterally reduced his hours without cutting his pay.
A leading labour law academic has told an IR conference that expanding the FWC's power to arbitrate agreement negotiations will be "the single biggest challenge" posed by the Secure Jobs changes, while the head of a peak state employer group's law firm says it is the "Damoclesean threat of the sword" that will bring people to the table.
The AiG says the FWC should take into account the Budget's substantial cost-of-living relief for the low-paid in granting an increase no higher than 3.8% in this year's minimum wage case, while the Albanese Government says there are "no signs" of a wage-price spiral and reiterates its view that the real wages of low-paid workers should not "go backwards".
