The Heydon Royal Commission will consider the allegations made against former HSU leader Kathy Jackson later this year, once the Federal Court rules in civil proceedings brought by her former union.
A national survey by the Human Rights Commission has found that a third of older job hunters abandoned their efforts after they experienced age discrimination.
The Heydon Royal Commission will investigate the interaction between union leaders and the ALP, as its inquiries take a more political turn in its second year.
Law firm Minter Ellison will earn about $17 million from providing legal services to the Heydon Royal Commission, which will resume public hearings on Thursday.
The licenced aircraft engineers' union is urging the "liberalisation" of union coverage rules, saying that if they didn't exist at all, the industrial unrest that fuelled the bargaining battle between the union and Qantas might have been diminished before the airline dramatically shut down its operations and locked out its workforce in 2011.
BHP Billiton has nominated the Coalition's right of entry and greenfields amendments, stalled in the Senate, as its first priorities for IR change, telling the Productivity Commission it also wants restrictions on agreement content, faster relief from industrial action and a wound-back adverse action regime.
The Department of Employment has crunched the numbers on Australia's 122 modern awards, finding that just half provide for weekend penalty loadings, and 26 rule them out.
ASX top 100 company Asciano, which estimates that its subsidiary Patrick's last bruising bargaining round cost it $21 million, is calling for a greater role for the Fair Work Commission in "agreement facilitation".
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
