A bargaining dispute at a major engineering workshop in the La Trobe Valley - in which the company has notified an indefinite lockout, the union an indefinite strike, and the AIRC has refused the first application for a Work Choices "cooling off" period - has entered its eleventh week.
ABC staff members of the CPSU and MEAA have voted by a 72% majority to accept the public broadcaster's improved 12% pay offer in a proposed new collective agreement.
Pay increases in private sector Work Choices collective agreements have plummeted to 3.2% a year in the September quarter, the lowest rise in four years and well below the 3.9% inflation rate, according to DEWR data released today.
The AWA offered to employees of failed carpet manufacturer Feltex by a prospective new employer erodes their conditions under their current Pre-Work Choices enterprise agreement and isn't an acceptable alternative, the AIRC has ruled.
Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has intervened to support an employer in an operational reasons dismissal appeal which was still before a full bench of the AIRC late this afternoon.
Older Australian men are reversing a 25-year trend of declining labour force participation, with their involvement rate increasing over the last five years, according to a Treasury paper.
ACTU secretary Greg Combet has called for a new national consensus to deliver Australia's long-term economic prosperity and social needs, in a wide-ranging speech in which he opposed nuclear energy and attacked the Telstra privatisation.
The Queenland Government discriminated against Aboriginal workers paid below-award wages at two Lutheran missions during the 1970s and 1980s, the Federal Court has ruled.
OWS warns of "huge fines" for underpayment of wages as another four employers prosecuted; Victorian public sector nurses to seek 7% annual pay rises in next EBA; and ACTU starts radio ads for Work Choices protest.
