The Queensland MBA has called pre-strike ballots "insane" and given support to pattern bargaining and a stronger role for the IRC during the ongoing Senate building and construction industry inquiry.
Despite ongoing efforts from employer groups and the CFMEU (construction division) to resolve the issue, only weeks remain before employers with unregistered agreements are caught by the new requirement to pay fringe benefits tax on contributions to employee entitlement funds.
In a bold new move to reposition the AWU, the union is tonight re-launching its venerable The Australian Worker magazine as a consumer magazine that will be sold in newsagents and mailed to members.
The Senate's inquiry into poverty has recommended a new minimum wage benchmark, a wide-ranging inquiry into low-paid employment, stronger rights for labour hire and regular casual workers and new efforts to end the growth in the "working poor".
The Federal Government and Business SA have attacked the Rann State Labor Government's Fair Work Bill as retrograde and a threat to jobs, while the State's unions maintain it doesn't go far enough to protect workers.
A "maverick" workforce planning manager at a US healthcare group spent US$100,000 to solve a labour shortage in critical care that was costing millions of dollars a year, according to a US HR metrics expert who is visiting Australia for a speaking tour sponsored by Workplace Express.
HREOC has today joined education unions, the Federal Opposition and the Democrats in opposing the Howard Government's proposal to change national sex discrimination laws to allow schools to offer male-only scholarships.
The AIRC has barred Fairfax, publishers of Melbourne's The Age newspaper, from making workers at the company's Spencer Street printing facility redundant until the expiry of their current agreement, which contains a no involuntary redundancy clause.
