The ANMF is urging the FWC to use "right to disconnect" award variations make it harder for employers to cut costs by relying on "threadbare" staffing and refusing to roster enough workers on-call, while the NTEU wants casual academics paid to respond to students outside their working hours.
Sydney University will not have to reinstate a lecturer sacked five years ago for superimposing a swastika on an image of an Israeli flag, after a full Federal Court majority found he could not prove that his "incendiary" conduct fell under intellectual freedom protections.
Mining giant Peabody has asked the High Court to weigh in on the "critical question" of when redundancies can be considered genuine and the extent of FWC powers to determine how employers might avoid job losses.
The Ai Group has told a Senate inquiry that the jobs transition plan in the Net Zero Bill currently before parliament "treads on very sensitive ground" when set against the established treatment of redundancies in Australia's IR framework.
A paid agent claiming to have never been told of any complaints about its services has welcomed FWC suggestions to regulate the industry while insisting the Commission should "surgically" root out "bad actors" rather than take a shotgun approach that could raise costs for workers contesting dismissals.
The Law Council has endorsed the FWC's quest for stricter regulation of paid agents, but warned it off considering the "capacity" of lawyers to act for parties in cases before the Commission.
ACCI has shot down union proposals that would require employers to provide delegates with iPads, phones, boosted recruitment rights and paid time off for political lobbying, accusing them of trying to use a new model awards term to outsource their own work.
In a decision sure to catch the eye of service providers using rostering apps to keep workers at arm's length, the FWC has found that a home care worker who signed two documents describing her as an independent contractor is in fact an employee capable of suing her employer for unlawful dismissal.
The law firm whose advocacy helped spur the FWC to consider regulating paid agents has called for improved "referral pathways" that steer workers contesting their dismissals towards pro bono clearing houses, Legal Aid and the community legal sector.
An experienced former employer-clientele lawyer turned HR manager has suggested that one way of discouraging paid agents from pursuing "unwinnable" cases is to introduce a "threshold" settlement amount below which they cannot charge clients for their services.
