An employer that failed to provide light duties to a heavily pregnant employee has been ordered to pay her $7,500 in compensation, while in a separate case, an anti-discrimination tribunal has refused to grant an exemption to allow a Baptist Church agency to only employ people with certain Christian beliefs.
Wage growth in federal enterprise agreements remains strong, edging up to 4.1% a year, largely as a result of substantial pay rises in the public sector.
The radical Work Choices bill is an unjustified assault on the cultural, economic, social, institutional, legal, political and constitutional underpinnings of work in Australia, according to the Democrats, while the Greens say it fails the Government's own benchmark of fairness, simplicity and choice.
Shadow IR Minister, Stephen Smith, today said the Senate was doing on IR what it did with the Telstra sale - acting as a "rubber stamp" for the Government.
Employers should be preparing their management strategies now for workplace absence rates as high as 50% if a bird flu pandemic occurs in Australia, according to leading researchers and academics at an Australian Industry Group conference this morning.
The Work Choices legislation is so flawed that any amendments would "only marginally mitigated the intended and unintended consequences", according to the report on the bill by Opposition senators.
Coalition senators have, as expected, proposed changes around the edges only to the sweeping Work Choices bill. Their report makes just one recommendation - that the Senate pass the legislation - but it states that the committee "would like" the Government to consider amendments on the 38-hour week averaging provisions, the 90-day notice period for terminating agreements, the prohibited matter rules for pre-reform agreements, outworker protection, the federal trainee/apprentice provisions, and guaranteeing four weeks annual leave.
With the Senate committee report on the Federal Government's Work Choices legislation due to be tabled at 1pm today, Family First Senator Steve Fielding has reiterated his objections to the legislation, and produced a list of his own amendments.
A Federal Court judge has reinstated an electrician and CEPU delegate sacked last month from ACI's Spotswood plant in Melbourne shortly after organising a stop work meeting to discuss the use of subcontractors at the site.
The International Labour Organisation has upheld an ACTU complaint that the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act breaches ILO Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining.