NSW Premier Morris Iemma has this afternoon launched a new campaign by NSW unions to sign up "fair employers" to a guarantee that they won't cut wages, move their workers onto AWAs or make them independent contractors.
The ASU has began legal proceedings in the Victorian Magistrates Court against Qantas Holidays Limited, alleging the company's changes to part-time call centre employees' rosters are discriminatory and in breach of the award.
The maritime unions' long-running legal battle to have Australian IR law apply to foreign-flagged vessels and foreign crew operating on the Australian coast came to an end - for as long as Work Choices remains law - in the High Court this morning.
The CFMEU's mining and energy division, in a bid to head off the climate change threat to its members in coal mining, is preparing to run shareholder campaigns to build support for mining companies to increase their spending on low emission coal-burning technology.
The OWS has filed legal action against the Hibberd and Prescott group over alleged AWA duress and the underpayment of wages for hotel workers in Tasmania, and says resistance and obstruction to its investigation might constitute criminal offences.
Growth in rates of pay has dipped in hospitality and retail since Work Choices became law, while annual growth in rates across all industries is failing to match headline inflation, according to the ABS.
Victorian ETU members have voted to endorse the union's controversial agreement with NECA, despite DEWR's withdrawal of its code-compliant status after the Federal Government this month widened its guidelines to cover prohibited content in unregistered side deeds.
The ACTU's application to flow on the AFPC's $27.36 minimum wage rise to 300,000 or so transitional employees will be before the AIRC for mention on Monday, after the Commission froze the case last year to await the new wage-setting body's decision.
Michael Harmer, chair of law firm Harmers Workplace Lawyers, has turned on the Howard Government over Work Choices' drastic erosion of unfair dismissal rights, saying the change is "not only going to cost livelihoods, it will cost lives".
Yesterday's High Court judgment upholding the Work Choices laws downplayed the practical implications of expanded federal regulation in favour of a textual legal analysis, according to Corrs Chambers Westgarth Partner Iain Ross, a former Vice President of the AIRC.
