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The number of employees working on contracts in Australia as measured by the ABS has surged by more than 850,000 in the last two years, but the bureau has warned the increase reflects a change in the question used in its labour surveys.

Employers with a good track record on skilled temporary visas will have their applications fast-tracked, new penalties will apply for rule breaches, and overseas workers will need English language skills to get into Australia under proposed changes to the s457 visa scheme announced today by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

ACTU secretary Greg Combet has signalled the end of the state IR systems under federal Labor's plans for a national regime legislated under the corporations power established by the High Court's Work Choices decision.

Despite criticism from employer groups that the ALP is on shaky legal ground with its plan to create a one-stop IR shop, Flinders University's Professor Andrew Stewart says that if done carefully, the proposal would be constitutional.

Federal Labor's proposed one-stop IR shop - Fair Work Australia - would have a judicial arm, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd revealed this morning.

A federal Labor Government would abolish the AIRC, the Fair Pay Commission, the Office of Workplace Services and the Office of the Employment Advocate, and replace them with an overarching IR office to be called Fair Work Australia.

No inflation pressure on wages, as CPI dips; Darrell Lea shelves AWAs; What AMMA wants from IR system; Delegate seeks first damages for employer's alleged breach of good faith obligation; ALP wants skilled migration to be faster and cleaner; Small business won't hire more because of Work Choices, says ALP; and MUA meets Maersk in Denmark.

In two separate "genuine operational reasons" decisions, the AIRC has found that a company did not breach Work Choices when it made an employee redundant then readvertised his job at a cheaper rate, while it also found that a firm that made its HR practitioner redundant acted lawfully.

The AMWU and CEPU have won orders for secret ballots for industrial action at CSBP's chemical operations at Kwinana and Albany in Western Australia despite company objections that the unions had not genuinely bargained by seeking fanciful claims.

A Rudd Labor Government would bring back the worst features of centralised wage-fixing, Prime Minister John Howard warned the Queensland Media Club yesterday, while Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson proposed a raft of new measures, including payroll tax harmonisation, to lift Australia's flagging labour productivity growth.