Towage company Svitzer is set to lock out its harbour tugboat workforce, claiming it has been forced into it by continuing disruptive protected action by three maritime unions.
Workplace Express has corrected and updated today's report on Professor Andrew Stewart's appearance at the Senate inquiry into the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill.
A senior UWU official who developed a multi-employer bargaining framework before Labor's surprise Jobs Summit announcement that it would be introducing such an arrangement says the Bill's provisions have a "real chance" of succeeding, but that it also reflects that the Government does not "comprehend the extent of the failure of the single enterprise bargaining policy".
Adelaide University Professor of Law Andrew Stewart has told a Senate hearing that the Albanese Government should withdraw and rework a contentious aspect of its Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, suggesting there is a "problem with the legislation" if as a technical expert he is unable to answer a simple question about coverage in the single interest bargaining provisions.
A large employer has been fined almost $100,000 after a court rejected its "bare apology" for requiring a newly-arrived migrant to work 12 extra hours a week for more than three years.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has warned that the prescriptive amendments sought by business and employer groups to the Secure Jobs Bill's multi-employer stream could render it as "ineffective and unusable" as the 13-year old Act's low paid bargaining stream, which hasn't been used since 2014 because parties "gave up on it".
BHP Coal is facing penalties and compensation payments for unlawfully "demobilising" a labour hire truck driver shortly after she refused to dump a load in a poorly-lit area, while it is also accused of "sophistry" in arguing that she had not properly addressed its potential motives.
New academic research suggests that one of Labor's signature legislative changes - halting unilateral terminations of expired agreements - is a solution to a problem less prevalent than widely understood, but the researchers nevertheless say the amendments will make the "strong-arm bargaining tactic" less attractive and remove the "shadow effect" of such threats.
The House of Representatives this afternoon passed an amended version of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill as the Albanese Government stepped up lobbying of key Senate crossbencher, David Pocock, to support the legislation.
