The labour hire company at the centre of a historic High Court ruling on employment status is shifting to paying its workers as casuals, while taking legal advice on longer-term arrangements, and is facing a backpay claim that the CFMMEU claims could reach $60 million.
Provisional wage review timetable approved; Secure jobs inquiry queries witness treatment; New FWC website to launch this weekend; Permit suspended after underwhelming case; Productivity Inquiry gets underway; Labour Hire Authority thwarts "phoenixing"; and Feedback sought on online hearings.
The Attorney-General's Department has revealed that it has prepared a draft report on harmonisation of labour hire laws using "best practice elements in existing schemes" across the states and territories.
Further casuals class actions are set to drop away as a result of the High Court's finding in Rossato that contracts are decisive in determining employment status, but Adero Law says it will continue to press other cases involving the black coal mining award.
BHP's internal labour hire operation is facing a union challenge to a key element of its model, which holds that its workers are not attached to particular mine sites or regions and can have their jobs relocated anywhere on the east coast.
The key lesson from last week's Mt Arthur ruling by a five-member FWC full bench is that employers that impose vaccination mandates not required by public health orders must comply with consultation obligations, according to the coal mining union's legal director.
A full Federal Court has dismissed an on-hire worker's bid to overturn a FWC ruling that it could not force a labour hire company to reinstate him to his former job at client CUB, upholding the tribunal's finding giving primacy to the host employer's right to determine who it allowed on its site.
Federal Labor's 'Same Job, Same Pay' legislation introduced into Parliament yesterday has won the endorsement of IR legal expert Anthony Forsyth, who says it represents the "next necessary step" in addressing the undesirable effects of labour hire workers being engaged for lengthy periods on lower wages and conditions than direct employees.
Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese this morning confirmed his determination to make working conditions a major battleground in the upcoming Federal election with his introduction of a private member's bill aimed at erasing the gap between directly-employed and labour hire workers.
Unions have branded further legislation by the Morrison Government to protect migrant workers as "inadequate, given the scale and of nature" of exploitation, a view endorsed by a leading academic researcher.
