Employer bodies have again failed to convince the Fair Work Commission to differentiate between modern awards in its annual wage review, with the tribunal's minimum wage panel highlighting legislative and practical factors in favour of maintaining a uniform approach.
The CFMEU's construction and general division Victorian branch and six organisers and delegates have been fined a total of $115,000 for coercing a major construction company to reinstate an employee by taking unlawful strike action across five separate building sites.
The ACTU says it is stunned that despite the Fair Work Commission's minimum wage panel acknowledging that wage inequality is rising in Australia, it has done "absolutely nothing" to deal with it in today's annual review decision.
The Fair Work Commission's minimum wage panel has decided to increase all award rates of pay by 2.6% in its 2013 annual wage review ruling, handed down today.
The prices and income accord would not have proceeded without then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, former Hawke Government IR Minister Ralph Willis has told a Macquarie University seminar to acknowledge its 30th anniversary.
In the dying days of the Whitlam Government, metalworker's' stalwart Laurie Carmichael told the ACTU's Bill Kelty that unions had to do better next time to keep Labor in office for longer. The day after Whitlam was sacked, then ACTU president Bob Hawke said to him that Australia needed a new way of making change.
In a significant decision, the Federal Court has found that Visy Packaging took adverse action against an elected safety representative by investigating his attempts to exercise a workplace right by sidelining two defective forklifts, leading to his suspension and a final written warning, just four months after it launched a "Tuff on Safety" campaign.
The Australian Law Reform Commission in its final report on barriers to workforce participation by older workers recommends extending the right to request flexible working arrangements - which the Federal Government is seeking to legislate in its bill to amend the Fair Work Act - and increasing notice entitlements for workers over 45.
An appeal right for employees whose requests for flexible work are denied and restrictions on employer industrial action in the wake of the Qantas dispute are among the amendments the Greens have put on the table ahead of talks with the federal government on the passage of its Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013.
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