The Albanese Government's IR legislation provides "big improvements" in the bargaining framework for low-paid workers, but the benefits of the multi-employer provisions might be more limited, according to a leading workplace law expert.
The Senate inquiry into the Albanese Government's Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill will report just six days after submissions close on November 11, as Labor seeks to clear the way for its passage before Parliament rises on December 1.
Ten days paid family and domestic violence leave is now a NES entitlement, after the House of Representatives this morning accepted the Senate's legislative amendments.
The Albanese Government's Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, introduced today, ushers in a new multi-employer bargaining regime, but with safeguards that will bar participation by unions with a record of flouting workplace laws, limit industrial action to those in a "supported bargaining stream" and exclude the commercial construction sector.
The Albanese Government's first major tranche of IR legislation beefs-up workers' rights to secure flexible working arrangements and empowers the FWC to arbitrate if conciliation of a refused request fails.
The FWC has slashed median approval times for enterprise agreements from 76 days to 15 days in the past five years, according to the tribunal's annual report.
A worker who claims FWC President Iain Ross admitted to having a problem with commissioners' "colonial attitude" has lost his Federal Court bid to sue the tribunal for racial discrimination.
In what looms as a showdown over BHP's in-house labour hire operation, the miner's Queensland coal workforce has overwhelmingly voted to take industrial action in pursuit of a new deal built around job security.
The Albanese Government is looking for an "economic dividend" from improving child care subsidies and paid parental leave, while noting the work-value case for aged care workers before the FWC is an unquantified fiscal risk.
