Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has today announced a new workplace watchdog to advise and protect workers in the State who are considering signing individual and collective deals under the Howard Government's proposed deregulated agreement-making regime.
A WA court has found it is not in the public interest for a commercial television station to dramatise the Howard Government's second wave IR changes by airing a covert recording of an employer allegedly explaining that he sacked an employee due to her pregnancy.
The AIRC has roped three major contract call centre companies into a safety net award that extends minimum standards across one of Australia's fastest-growing outsourcing industries.
Liberal backbencher Andrew Robb, who is heading the Howard Government's committee to sell the second wave IR changes to the public, today drew on his experience in bitter industrial disputes when he was head of the National Farmers Federation to make the case for further "evolutionary" deregulation of the labour market.
The Federal Government's right to recover funds advanced to insolvent companies to pay employee entitlements under its GEERS scheme has been thrown into doubt by a Federal Court decision.
Mitsubishi is pioneering a new way of managing its temporary labour pool, with casual workers' loadings being accrued into a fund they can use if they need time off.
In the latest skirmish between John Holland and the CFMEU (construction division), the Federal Court yesterday refused the company's application for an injunction and secondary boycott damages over industrial action on a tram-track replacement project in Melbourne's CBD.
Parliament's heavy legislative programme means some of the Federal Government's IR bills listed for this week won't now be looked at again until, at the earliest, the sitting period beginning September 5.
HREOC has recommended the Howard Government require employers to report regularly on their employment of people with disability, in an interim report released today.
It's time for farmers' organisations to form a pact with unions with a view to boosting the skills and productivity of the rural workforce and moving away from the "cycle of low pay" that is hampering the sector's development, according to a farming think tank.
