Employee wins mammoth $466,000 sexual harassment payout; Coalition to oppose construction IR bill, Senate inquiry to report in September; Bank worker sacked after statements in court; and Union welcomes pay freeze for Telstra executives.
A pay deal for Australia Post's 32,000-plus employees remains elusive, with its key union's hopes now fading that the Fair Work Act's more liberal agreement content rules could help breathe new life into the negotiations.
A NSW doctor has failed in her claim that the state Department of Health's decision to deny her paid maternity leave constituted unlawful sex discrimination; and the AIRC has rejected a charity's argument that more than $5,000 an employee saved on FBT should be taken into account in calculating his salary for unfair dismissal purposes.
A pumphouse attendant at a steelworks who twice gave a co-worker an unwanted open-mouthed kiss has failed to convince the NSW IRC that his dismissal for sexual harassment was unfair.
The Federal Court has ordered a blind manufacturer to pay a total of $360,000 to the CFMEU Federated Furnishing Trades Division's Victorian branch and about 40 of its members, after finding the company had been underpaying night shift loading.
Just one in every 45 employees had their pay and conditions determined by AWAs or ITEAs in August last year, according to new ABS statistics that, according to Professor David Peetz, prove that claims about AWA density before the 2007 federal election were "wildly exaggerated".
Virgin Blue has failed to win support from its cabin crew for a new agreement negotiated with employees that would have increased rostered hours, reconfigured pay scales and cut wages for new starters.
The NSW Supreme Court has rejected a real estate agency's bid to enforce restraints in a former employee's contract to prevent him working for a nearby competitor.
Executive pay in Australia has been driven by "leap-frogging" - an inflationary form of comparative wage justice that ordinary employees had to abandon as "old hat and dangerous" in the enterprise bargaining era, according to Griffith University's Professor David Peetz. He also says the Fair Work Act's legal minimum is a "useful benchmark" when setting executives' termination payouts.
Just 5% (or less than 600,000) of Australia's 10.65 million workers have been placed in jobs by recruitment or labour hire companies, according to new ABS data that also reveals there are almost a million independent contractors.
