A FWC panel has declined to offer its own methodology for assessing gender-based undervaluation of work after employers and unions involved in its consideration of five female-dominated awards failed to agree on engaging an independent expert to do the job.
The Electrical Trades Union is urging the Albanese Government to close gaps in privacy laws to stop resource employers routinely breaching workers' privacy with mandatory blood sampling before they are engaged, warning that the model is being promoted "as a standard step in the recruitment process in all industries in Australia".
The FWC has accepted a casual worker's five-weeks-late unfair dismissal claim after finding that the employer gave him the impression that his employment would continue pending an investigation, and then ignored any further contact attempts.
The FWC has late today declined to expedite Transgrid's application for an intractable bargaining application against the ETU, after the power company last week won a two-month suspension of the union's protected action, but lost its bid to block an order for production of documents.
The Senate has this evening passed the Government's legislation to put the CFMEU's construction division and branches into administration, after the Coalition secured changes including putting the union in the hands of administrator Mark Irving KC for a minimum of three years.
The Coalition will support passage of the Albanese Government's legislation clearing the way to appoint an administrator to the CFMEU's troubled construction division branches.
Two recycling industry workers have been allowed to keep 30% of their redundancy payments after the FWC accepted that while their former employer found them acceptable alternative employment, it involved moving from a "nice, clean" office to a "dusty, malodorous" one.
The FWC will hear an employer application to vary the SCHADS award's sleepover allowance alongside a group of unions, but will exclude parts of the unions' draft determination that "go beyond the scope" of the original application.
The Fair Work Act's new prohibition on pay secrecy clauses provides a useful model for restricting the use of non-compete and non-solicitation clauses and penalising their inclusion in contracts, which should apply equally to employees and employee-like workers, according to former FWC President Iain Ross and IR law academic Andrew Stewart.
Ahead of the October 26 State election, Queensland unions are set to launch a campaign today to lift the current public sector parental leave entitlement of 15 weeks to 18 weeks, plus an extra eight weeks for workers with five years service.
