Despite Work Choices over-riding state IR law for constitutional corporations, the NSW IRC has listed a bargaining dispute for arbitration, ruling that the company's failure to bargain in good faith as directed before the new federal laws were enacted meant dispute resolution proceedings commenced in the state jurisdiction could continue.
The OEA's refusal to publish collective agreements registered since the Work Choices commencement is not in the public interest and based on a "nonsense" excuse, according to leading industrial relations academics.
The NSW Government will amend the state Industrial Relations Act to allow the NSW IRC to hold joint hearings with other state tribunals, raising the possibility of combined state sittings on minimum wages and award test cases.
A Queensland employer group website that promotes using Work Choices to introduce a flat weekend rate, make staff accountable for till shortages, remove the minimum engagement period for juniors and "do away with the award system forever" has been seized on by the ACTU as evidence of a push "to slash award pay and conditions under the Howard Government's new IR laws".
Coles Myer Logistics has the right to use its video surveillance system to check on potential safety breaches, the AIRC has ruled in a decision upholding the dismissal of a forklift driver who failed to obey a stop sign in a warehouse.
Virgin Blue hasn't decided whether it might offer AWAs to cabin and flight crew if it proceeds with its plans to fly to the US, while it hopes its existing pilots will be voting next month on a new union agreement that provides more rostering flexibility, according to chief executive Brett Godfrey.
The Victorian Government has limited its much-anticipated reform of workplace privacy laws to banning surveillance of toilets, washrooms, change rooms and lactation rooms, except where authorised under security or licensing laws.
A full bench of the AIRC has said that pattern bargaining involves seeking common wages, not common wage increases, in a decision that also upholds an earlier finding that a union's willingness to be flexible on the incremental delivery of its 12% pay claim showed it was not pattern bargaining.
