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With two federal Coalition senators already expressing concerns about the Government's second-wave plans, state shadow IR ministers will tomorrow afternoon get their turn to put their views to Federal Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews.

The NSW and WA industrial tribunals have flowed-on to state award workers the $17 weekly wage rise handed down in the AIRC’s safety net review on June 7.

Today is the last day the Coalition has to rely on Democrats' IR spokesperson, Senator Andrew Murray, to get its legislation through Parliament. He warns, however, against farewelling him finally from the IR sphere of influence.

PM John Howard has today ruled out increasing standard weekly working hours to 40 a week, while Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews says his second wave IR legislation will simplify minimum requirements for AWAs so much that they could be as short as one page.

The "double shift" borne by women who combine paid work with a disproportionate amount of domestic tasks is likely to become a "triple shift" as they have to also take on elder care, Sex Discrimination Commission Pru Goward warned today as she launched a new discussion paper on better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women.

The ACTU today, in response to criticism from Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews, said it wouldn't be withdrawing its television commercials that seek to highlight the potential effects of the Federal Government's second wave IR plans on employees, while it labelled the Minister a hypocrite for allegedly breaching workplace laws in his own department.

The ALP and Democrats have jointly found that there is no empirical evidence or research to support the Federal Government's claim that exempting small business from unfair dismissal laws will create 77,000 jobs.

A report card by 17 leading academics and researchers on the Federal Government's proposed second wave or IR change has concluded that it has not only failed to address Australia's critical labour market problems but it will undermine employees' rights at work, deliver one-way flexibility, do nothing to increase productivity, and disadvantage the most marginalised workers.

Wage subsidies, greater employee choice in working hours, more training opportunities and universal access to job search assistance should be considered by the Federal Government to address populating ageing, a new OECD report says.

Around 30,000 Telstra employees will vote in coming weeks on a proposed new enterprise agreement that restricts annual wage rises to 2.5%, but locks in generous public sector conditions ahead of the planned full privatisation of the telco.