As the Senate prepares to consider the Albanese Government's Secure Jobs Bill, a new ACTU paper says the legislation's multi-employer bargaining provisions will be crucial in lifting wages in seven of the eight industries with above-average gender pay gaps.
Former IR minister Michaelia Cash has suggested that her predecessor in the role, Peter Reith, would have "enjoyed the irony" of his death coming during heated debate over new workplace laws, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed that the two got on "extremely well" over lunch in London after he left politics.
A leading gender and IR expert says providing 12 paid menstruation and menopause leave days per year would be a "very positive start", as unions and Maurice Blackburn prepare a campaign likely to push for at least this level of entitlement via legislative reforms and agreements.
Queensland's public school teachers have voted up by a 94% margin a proposed deal making them some of the best paid in the country and encouraging them to disconnect from digital technologies outside of work, while the Greens are pushing to enshrine a right to disconnect in federal law.
The CFMMEU's construction and general division will impose a ban on importing and manufacturing stone products linked to silicosis and other diseases, if federal and state governments fail to move first.
The FWC last week rejected Svitzer's push for termination of industrial action partly because of its opportunistic and illegitimate use of a Qantas-style bid to end bargaining that would undermine the Fair Work Act's objectives, it has explained in newly-issued reasons.
The FWC has resisted speculating about whether an unvaccinated FIFO worker lost his job for refusing to "steal" a competitor's new product from a BHP mine site, but has nevertheless ordered his former employer to pay compensation after finding he could have been redeployed to its Perth workshop.
The Albanese Government has given ground on its IR legislation to win support in the Senate, increasing the small business threshold for multi-employer bargaining to 20, but key crossbencher Senator David Pocock is continuing to push for the single-interest provisions to be sidelined until next year.
In the final hearing before the Senate inquiry into the Secure Jobs Bill releases its report today, key ACT Independent senator David Pocock this morning sought more clarity on how interest-based bargaining will work and probed a finding that the government's impact analysis is merely "adequate".
