As the FWC calls for submissions on an employer bid to ditch the term "penalty rates" and replace it with "additional remuneration", a senior union-clientele lawyer is warning of a "slippery slope" if recognition of a need to compensate those working unsociable hours is removed.
The FWC has confirmed it has the power to determine a dispute between labour supplier WorkPac and the CFMEU over pay cuts at a Rio Tinto coal mine, but its intervention is conditional on the union naming the employees involved.
The CPSU is ramping-up its campaign to break a bargaining deadlock at the Department of Human Services, with rolling stoppages set to start next week, but the department anticipates the effect of the union's action will be "minimal".
The FWC has issued an interim order to restrain an employer from disciplining an executive for alleged misconduct until the tribunal determines her anti-bullying application.
The timetable for having the Registered Organisations Commission up and running appears to have slipped, with a new target adopted for it to be in place by the end of June.
The FWC has issued a new entry permit to a CFMEU official despite his "serious lack of diligence" in misplacing his old one, while it has granted a fresh permit to another of the union's officials – a former acting national secretary of the FSU - after finding it need not "rigidly apply" a general rule that applicants have completed entry training within the previous three months.
The FWC has asked the Turnbull Government to clarify whether it intends to amend the Fair Work Act to enable the tribunal to make take home pay orders to potentially mitigate hardship flowing from its decision to cut hospitality and retail workers' penalty rates, and is seeking further submissions on transitional arrangements.
The TWU will oppose the approval of what it alleges is a substandard ground-handling agreement put forward by a company within the Emirates airlines group that offers workers 60 hours' work per month with no weekly guarantee.
