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The Howard Government's $83m funding over three years to encourage workplace change in higher education won't focus on key items on the Government's IR agenda - such as fostering direct relationships with employees - until the second and third years of the program.

Work Choices has made IR regulation so complex that employers will increasingly spurn it and rely on HR policy to prescribe practices in the workplace, ACIRRT's John Buchanan told the weekend's HR Nicholls conference. And in a separate address to the conference, the MBAV said the next bargaining round is the chance to do non-union deals.

Suncorp is re-engineering its recruitment systems and has now virtually dropped all print advertising for specific job roles.

NSW childcare workers have won pay rises averaging 16% in the NSW IRC's first specific pay equity case judgment.

ACOSS and the ACTU have released plans to improve childcare availability and cut costs for most working parents amid speculation of policy changes in the Federal Budget to accompany the government's welfare to work program.

Queensland's 22,000 public hospital nurses have been offered a wages package worth 23% over three-and-a-half years by the State Government.

The flight attendants' union has finalised three-year deals paying 3% annual increases with Qantas and its low-cost-subsidiary Jetstar and has agreed in principle to a framework deal for Virgin Blue.

Centrelink has escaped becoming the first prosecution under new workplace surveillance laws after NSW prosecutors baulked at uncertainty about whether the State legislation applies to federal agencies.

Wage growth in federal enterprise agreements has reached an eight-year high of 4.5% a year, due to surging pay rises in the public sector, particularly in education.

Eldercare is the major source of work-life conflict for Canadian workers, and it's likely Australia will follow the same trend, according to one of North America's leading academic researchers on work and family.