An AIRC full bench has acceded to a bid by Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews to overturn variations to pre-reform awards that went beyond jurisdictional limits under Work Choices by updating wage rates.
Qualified support from teaching unions for Beazley standards-based pay proposal; Qantas maintenance workers vote up three-year deal; CFMEU television commercial misleading, says ABCC, but CFMEU demurs; Little change in workers' mobility, says ABS; and Concerts to encourage youth to enrol to vote, send message to Canberra on IR.
The ALP federally has the support of the state Labor premiers for both its national approach to IR regulation and its key IR policy planks - including the abolition of AWAs - according to Shadow IR Minister Stephen Smith.
The union movement's support for a national IR system based on the corporations power plus its new collective bargaining position are at the heart of its IR legislation policy - unanimously endorsed by ACTU Congress in Melbourne yesterday. But the 37-page document - which unions will lobby the ALP to adopt - also deals in detail with a raft of other key matters, including the AIRC's role, minimum standards, unfair dismissal, freedom of association, independent contractors, trade practices law, employee entitlement protection, and which government bodies should go and which should stay.
In its first minimum pay determination today, the Fair Pay Commission has delivered a substantial pay rise approaching 4% a year to workers on the federal minimum wage.
The Federal Government and unions today welcomed the Fair Pay Commission's first minimum wage determination but business leaders attacked the decision as a $2 billion cost on employers without any required increases in productivity.
In its first minimum wage determination, the Fair Pay Commission has awarded pay increases of between $22.04 and $27.36 a week to more than a million workers covered by award pay scales, to take effect from December 1.
Unions will step up their multi-million dollar television campaign against the Work Choices laws in the lead up to next year's federal election, with the launch today of a CFMEU advertisement highlighting the coercive powers of the BCII Act.
ACTU secretary Greg Combet has acknowledged the apprehension some union delegates feel about the peak council's new IR policy - unanimously endorsed this morning - which relies heavily on the corporations power and weakens the role of the state systems.
