The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has called for this year's minimum wage increase to be no higher than 1.9% or about $13.20 a week, after taking into account the impact on small and regional businesses.
The Fair Work Commission has sought to better delineate the law around so-called constructive dismissals, in a case in which it lambasted a multinational company's HR department for overseeing a process it likened to "entrapment".
In a novel decision on the need to consider alternative duties for incapacitated workers, the FWC has found an agreement clause requiring directions to be reasonable trumped BHP Coal's common law right to refuse to allow a mineworker to perform only part of his job.
Former union leader Julie Bignell is among of a group of senior elected officials and employees of Together Queensland who have complained to the ROC and privacy commissioner over alleged unlawful and unauthorised covert in-house surveillance of their emails and keystrokes during a protracted merger process completed three years ago.
In the lead-up to the AWU wielding its numbers at the ACTU Congress in July, the union has commissioned a "modern membership project" after the Registered Organisations Commission recommended that it undertake an external audit to correct historical discrepancies in its enrolments.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has called for ASIC-style powers to ask a court to disqualify "repeat offenders" from running companies and avoiding backpay and penalties through phoenix company activity.
The CFMEU and 19 of its "officials and agents" have been fined more than $800,000 for disrupting two major projects in an effort to force a construction company into signing a favourable enterprise agreement.
The FWC has observed it is "not necessary" to consider whether representation creates unfairness between parties, as a French company was granted permission to engage a lawyer to defend a self-represented employee's unfair dismissal claim.
A court has elected not to impose a personal payment order against a CFMEU official fined $7500 for organising action that severely disrupted a major construction project, despite finding his actions "nothing short of unconscionable".
