The Prime Minister, John Howard, maintains the growth of the "enterprise worker" has been the most important economic development in Australia in the last two decades, and says it is "attitude of mind" that separates them from the rest.
Despite the tight labour market, most employers are still only paying lip service to efforts to retain existing employees, and are focussing their expenditure on attracting new staff, according to new research.
The AIRC has ruled that an extensive employee representation clause in an EBA does not give union officials an "unfettered right" to enter workplaces to attend senior staff meetings, even though all the senior officers were union members.
The SDA is among the unions taking up the ACTU's call to lobby Coalition backbenchers in marginal seats against the proposed federal IR changes. But it is coming up against a potential snag in the plan - appointments are proving hard to come by.
SA school holiday hiatus in teachers' industrial action; Redundancy unfair despite "rigorous and inclusive" assessment; Nestle agrees to higher redundancy for rural workers.
As the Federal Government prepares to run-full page newspaper ads from tomorrow to counter the negative public reaction to its IR platform, unions and the Coalition continue to seize on the on-going battle in Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews' own department to support their case against the reforms.
Weekend penalties and shift allowances are to be restored for up to 45,000 NSW local government employees, after Councils and unions agreed to end a failed experiment in flexible working hours.
The NSW Supreme Court has found two major Australian companies liable for misconduct by one of their former security managers, even though his behaviour breached company policies and he was terminated when the misconduct was discovered.
The ALP should reaffirm its bonds with the Australian union movement in its "hour of greatest need", according to former Opposition IR Minister, Dr Craig Emerson.
