Some 25,000 Commonwealth Bank employees plan to strike for 24 hours on Friday June 9, after the bank failed to meet the Finance Sector Union's May 25 deadline for boosting its wages offer of 2% a year plus performance pay.
In another indication that wage growth is remaining steady in the face of the GST, growing labour shortages and union bargaining campaigns, the ABS Wage Cost Index has shown an increase in hourly rates of pay excluding bonuses of just 0.7% in the first quarter of 2000 and 2.8% in the past year.
Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has given a commitment that a Labor Government would abolish AWAs and the Office of the Employment Advocate, but said he'd only recently decided his position on AWAs after considering the possibility of a modified form of statutory individual contract.
Enterprise agreements registered in the first quarter provide no evidence of a pre-GST wages breakout, with private sector deals showing average annual increases of 3.6% per employee (up from 3.5%) and just 6% of employees covered by agreements containing GST clauses.
The National Union of Workers breached freedom of association laws when it told a labour hire company to remove a non-union worker from a warehouse to another of the labour hire company's jobs, the Federal Court has found, in a case brought by the Employment Advocate.
Victorian metal industry employers could on Friday be facing what many regard as their worst nightmare: the Federal Court declaring Workers First's Craig Johnston to have won the State secretary position at the AMWU's Victorian branch.
The Federal Court has fined Victorian metal union leaders Craig Johnston and Dean Mighell $20,000 each for contempt of court, but robbed them of the opportunity of serving jail terms if they default on the fines.
The AMWU (vehicle division) has served Ford Australia with a claim for a 24% pay rise over three years - the same quantum the union's metal division is seeking.
The NUW's maverick NSW secretary, Frank Belan, has confirmed that his union has disaffiliated from the ALP, in part because of the party's lack of assistance over the financially crippling David's dispute.
