A full bench of the NSW IRC has recommended trialling for a year a new drug and alcohol policy at BHP's Port Kembla steelworks following another attempt by the AWU to change the company's existing position, which it maintains is "draconian".
For our final story of the year, Workplace Express asked those involved in the big IR events of 2003 to rewrite the year so that it turned out exactly how they would have liked it to. This is what they said . . .
About 1,100 employees at four paper mills in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania have won a wage increase of 4.6% a year and an average superannuation increase of 2% over three years, while 2,600 Department of Veterans' Affairs employees have won new paid leave entitlements.
An electronic payments company chief executive lured to the job by an executive search company's misleading representations has won a total payment of $1.9m, in an unfair contract ruling by the NSW IRC.
The AIRC has certified an agreement covering Salmat call centre employees that failed the no disadvantage test, after accepting undertakings from the employer.
The CFMEU (mining & energy division) today won the latest round in its five-year battle with Rio Tinto over the fate of the 16 former Blair Athol workers, with a full bench of the Federal Court rejecting the company's application for a stay of the AIRC order that they be given preference of employment at the nearby Hail Creek mine.
The AIRC President, Justice Geoffrey Giudice, will refer all union and employer applications in the work and family test case to the same full bench – except, for now at least, those covering the construction industry.
The LHMU has applied for the pay and conditions of dental assistants to be raised considerably because their work has been undervalued on a gender basis, in what will be the first test of the State's new equal remuneration principle.
