Attorney General and IR Minister Michaelia Cash has today appointed a senior Sydney IR and employment silk as a Federal Court judge, while she has refused to confirm whether she intends to make any FWC appointments ahead of the Government going into caretaker mode.
The plight of two strawberry pickers claiming they lost shifts in retaliation for giving evidence to a Senate inquiry into insecure employment highlights the vulnerabilities and exploitation faced by seasonal workers, according to a Labor/Greens-majority final report.
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has promised that if Labor takes power at the election likely next month, it will make a submission to the FWC's aged care work value case full bench supporting a pay rise for the industry's workforce and undertaking to fund the arbitrated increase.
A four-member FWC full bench has given a pathology worker a second chance to contest his dismissal after admitting fresh evidence that his employer told the Anti-Discrimination NSW he had been sacked, having previously insisted in the Commission that he had "walked off the job".
A large employer organisation has called for the FWC to award minimum pay rises of 2.5% to 3% to help maintain living standards amid rising inflation, albeit with pay rises delayed for industries hardest hit by the pandemic.
Former IR Minister Christian Porter has farewelled Parliament in a speech in which he warned of the power of the "mob" and ruminated on the distorted nature of time at politic's epicentre.
In a clear effort to turn up the heat on IR reforms ahead of the federal election, the resource sector's peak employer body has urged all major parties to commit to introducing key parts of the Morrison Government's so-called Omnibus Bill that were hastily jettisoned last year.
Parliamentarians leading tributes to former Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching have recalled her pride in and lessons learned from her brief time in the scandal-plagued Health Services Union, with a Coalition minister acknowledging the period had "hardened" her for politics.
In a case applying the High Court's new guidelines on contractors, a judge has rejected a worker's bid for leave, super and redundancy payments after finding he was not an employee despite averaging 38 hours a week over eight years for a solitary employer.
The ACTU will pursue a 5% increase across all award rates in this year's minimum wage review, arguing it is needed to compensate workers for cost of living pressures.
