Howard again refuses to guarantee workers won't be worse off; Crosby's new book says unions must lift their annual fees to ACTU's 2003 benchmark of $468; Male working lives cut by ten years between 1966 and 1991, AFPC to cut wages, says Gregory; and PC head says restrictions on labour hire and casual employment will hamper employment of mature workers.
Big American prison management company GEO Group has failed in its bid to terminate a bargaining period for prison guards at its Fulham Prison in Victoria.
Employment Advocate Peter McIlwain has defended his office and the AWAs it approves from union and academic claims of exploitation in submissions to the Senate inquiry into industrial agreements.
Family First Senator Steve Fielding today called for an inquiry into penalty rates, including how to compensate workers who could lose overtime and shift allowances under the Federal Government's second wave industrial legislation.
If the Howard Government blocks the ACTU's 2006 Living Wage claim, the Queensland Government might bring the states together to look at ways to ensure nationally-consistent rates of pay for workers remaining under the state systems, Queensland IR Minister Tom Barton said today.
In a reversal of the way the game is usually played - and something WA CFMEU (construction division) secretary, Kevin Reynolds, says has never happened to his union before - the John Holland Group has today initiated bargaining periods against the CFMEU on two projects in Perth.
Employment Advocate Peter McIlwain has threatened to remove one of the largest producers of AWAs in Australia from the OEA's specified partner program.
It's the big one that has largely slipped under the radar. Sandwiched between the Federal Government's tough Cole-based construction legislation and its looming second-wave laws, the Better Bargaining bill went through the Lower House last fortnight with no fanfare from the Government and with little comment from the unions. Yet the bill makes major changes to federal bargaining laws, including allowing for lawful union bargaining to be stopped mid-dispute, and severely limiting unions' ability to pursue common claims.
A full bench of the High Court - including new appointee, Justice Susan Crennan - will next month hear an appeal in the long-running Amery indirect discrimination case.
