WA's Cook Labor Government has introduced legislation to lift casual loading from 20% to 25%, give some workers an enforceable right to request flexibility, and empower the IRC to discipline industrial agents, but it continues to lag on portable LSL.
A parliamentary inquiry has recommended the Albanese Government consider amending the Fair Work Act's right to request flexible work to ensure menopausal women can access it, while it also wants reproductive leave added to the NES and awards.
The Health Services Union has won 12 days paid reproductive leave in a deal for about 1600 disability service workers, in a "watershed" development it says could be expanded nationwide, as it bargains to entrench the entitlement in five further agreements.
The FWC's bid to develop an award clause removing impediments to working from home looks to be a slow burn, with a hearing likely next June following a possible employee survey.
Queensland's Miles Government has secured the passage of legislation to introduce a broad positive duty to eliminate not only sexual harassment and harassment on the basis of s-x, but discrimination and "other objectionable conduct" as far as possible.
The FWC has backed the Commonwealth Bank's sacking of an "insubordinate" worker who argued it could not discipline him for pummelling his manager with abusive text messages because he sent them outside of working hours.
The FWC has found that a worker failed to establish an "objective rational connection" between her age and her flexible working request, after she resisted ANZ's hybrid working policy and asked to work 100% from home because of her fear of catching COVID-19.
The Electrical Trades Union is urging the Albanese Government to close gaps in privacy laws to stop resource employers routinely breaching workers' privacy with mandatory blood sampling before they are engaged, warning that the model is being promoted "as a standard step in the recruitment process in all industries in Australia".
The FWC has granted a worker a one day extension for his unfair dismissal claim due to the merits of his case, after he alleged his employer summarily dismissed him for a positive drug test taken during a period of annual leave, when its zero tolerance policy would not apply.
