Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has foreshadowed major changes to Labor's workplace policies later this year, declaring that Australia's enterprise bargaining system is on "life support".
Major political parties must stop playing politically-expedient football with the IR system and engage in genuine national consultation on a new "middle path", according to Harmers Workplace Lawyers chair Michael Harmer.
A full Federal Court has rejected an appeal by a CFMEU construction and general division official against answering questions in court from his own counsel on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.
Leading online jobs marketplace SEEK has told a Senate inquiry into the future of work that Australians face a "significant shock" as technological forces continue to drive wages down, while the Productivity Commission has warned that digital disruption might ultimately require the introduction of a universal basic income.
Requirements for bargaining representatives from this week to disclose financial benefits stemming from enterprise agreements before workers vote on them will make it easier to track the revenue the deals generate for unions, employers say.
The "near disappearance" of industrial action over recent decades is strongly correlated with the "deceleration" of wages growth, according to the new analysis released by the Centre for Future Work just days after the FWC halted the planned Sydney train strike.
Abandonment of employment clauses have been removed from six modern awards in the wake of an FWC full bench ruling that employers must take the "additional step" of ending the employment relationship when a worker walks off the job.
The FWC has green-lighted an employer's plan to re-introduce random urine testing following a decade-long hiatus, holding that its policy did not operate on a "use it or lose it" basis and it remained an enforceable element of the agreement.
The legislative tension between state and federal union rules has been highlighted after a tribunal dismissed an expelled official's bid for reinstatement on the basis that it lacked the jurisdiction to give orders or directions to a national body.
