Leading online jobs marketplace SEEK has told a Senate inquiry into the future of work that Australians face a "significant shock" as technological forces continue to drive wages down, while the Productivity Commission has warned that digital disruption might ultimately require the introduction of a universal basic income.
The "near disappearance" of industrial action over recent decades is strongly correlated with the "deceleration" of wages growth, according to the new analysis released by the Centre for Future Work just days after the FWC halted the planned Sydney train strike.
In a decision that United Voice says will make it harder for low-paid workers to be classified as award free, an FWC full bench has found that animal attendants and supervisors covered by a Queensland pet resort agreement should have been assessed against the Miscellaneous Award.
The ramifications of recent legislative changes requiring employers to disprove employees' records of hours worked in wage claim cases have been spelt out in a court decision imposing penalties of more than $120,000 on a company and its director for underpaying an apprentice.
United Voice's Victorian branch has unveiled a Trip Advisor-style website to expose alleged wage theft and sexual harassment in the hospitality industry.
Labor's audacious bid to restore penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors by piggy-backing one of the Federal Government's own IR bills fell at the first hurdle today, when rebel Nationals MP George Christensen indicated he could not support legislation that failed to protect businesses from back-pay claims.
The future of a joint union equal pay claim for childcare workers is hanging in the balance after an FWC full bench was yesterday left searching for "real world" scenarios establishing metalworkers as a suitable comparator.
In a reply submission ahead of an FWC full bench hearing in Sydney tomorrow, United Voice and the AEU have hit out at employers' objections to the use of a 2005 work value case to establish metalworkers as an appropriate comparator in their equal pay claim for early childhood workers.
The ETU has declared a major payday for more than 4000 Queensland apprentices it claims are owed $70 million in underpayments after a full Federal Court today held that an old State award that continued to dictate their pay was superseded three years ago.