A showdown is looming over the ACTU's 2006 living wage claim, with unions committed to forging ahead with it while Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews insists that the 2005 safety net ruling will be the last.
The AWU is making an international issue of its four-month-old dispute at Boeing's RAAF maintenance base at Williamtown in NSW by linking it with a strike by 18,000 Boeing aircraft machinists in the United States.
The ACTU today applied for an annual safety net increase in award pay rates of 4%, in line with the Wage Price Index, and threatened to take the claim to state industrial commissions if the AIRC does not decide the case.
The Reserve Bank has struck a deal with the FSU that pays its 311 agreement-covered employees a 4% annual pay rise – well shy of the 4.5% mark that sets off the central bank’s wage growth alarm bells.
Liberal MP Andrew Robb has today championed Rio Tinto's iron ore operations as a breathtaking example of the turnaround in IR practices able to be achieved by dealing directly with employees - a model that will be fostered by the Howard Government's second wave IR changes.
Emerging "thaw" in union-employer relations at ANZ; bargaining deadlock continues between Westpac and FSU; and union seeks 3% employer contribution to super at NAB.
The new Australian Fair Pay Commission will set national training and apprenticeship pay rates "at levels that ensure they are competitive in the labour market", while awards will no longer be able to regulate the duration of apprenticeships under more second-wave detail announced today by the Prime Minister, John Howard.
The CFMEU (mining & energy division) has today launched its campaign to protect coal miners' long service leave entitlements from the Federal Government's second-wave IR laws, with full-page advertisements in major metropolitan and regional papers.
