One year into a landmark agreement between Airtasker and Unions NSW to improve pay and conditions, the company's chief executive Tim Fung has told a Senate inquiry the platform's technology is not up to the task of ensuring adherence to minimum pay and licensing requirements.
A senior FWC member has approved an employer's request for legal representation in a dismissal case, but not before requiring hearings be conducted in private, that he be free to provide "appropriate" guidance to the unrepresented former worker, and that he retain the power to revoke permission if the lawyer complicates proceedings.
The Melbourne Magistrates Court has today set down a 13-day committal hearing on blackmail charges against Victorian CFMEU leaders John Setka and Shaun Reardon to start on May 7.
The head of the newly-merged CFMMEU, Michael O'Connor, says the mega-union will work "slowly and carefully" through the early days of creating the new organisation.
The FWC has observed it is "not necessary" to consider whether representation creates unfairness between parties, as a French company was granted permission to engage a lawyer to defend a self-represented employee's unfair dismissal claim.
A court has elected not to impose a personal payment order against a CFMEU official fined $7500 for organising action that severely disrupted a major construction project, despite finding his actions "nothing short of unconscionable".
The AFP has interviewed staffers from more than one ministerial office in its investigation into the leaking of information on last year's raids on the AWU, a Senate Estimates hearing has been told.
One of Victoria's most senior judges has queried whether the blackmail charges laid against two CFMEU officials over an alleged secondary boycott of Boral are a "little experimental".
Suppressed wage growth and rising inequality pose a threat to both Australia's economy and its political stability, according to former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan, who used a party-sponsored conference on the weekend to confirm that his personal economic settings had been "moved to the left" by the GFC.
