Legal page 547 of 571

Tasmania's Hodgman Government has introduced draft legislation for its proposal to impose a 12-month freeze on the wages and incremental increases of the state's 24,000 public servants and remove the State IRC's power to award future pay increases above a 2% Government-set cap.

The Fair Work Commission has granted a company's request for good faith bargaining orders to provide for separate negotiations over four agreements in one case, but has knocked back a union's application for orders in another after finding that the employer was entitled to take a "hard" position in discussions.

Small business owners approach the Fair Work Act's modern awards with a mixture of dread and resignation, according to a new report.

The Federal Circuit Court has awarded a long-distance bus driver $13,000 after rejecting his employer's argument that he was employed to work shifts rather than calendar days and therefore not entitled to a living away from home allowance.

The High Court has reserved its decision on whether BHP Coal fell foul of the Fair Work Act's adverse action provisions by sacking a worker for breaching its workplace conduct policy after he held up an anti-"scab" sign at a picket.

The Abbott Government this morning introduced a Bill in the House of Representatives to cap redundancy payments under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme at a maximum of 16 weeks, describing the current benefits for employees of insolvent companies as "overly generous" and as creating a "moral hazard".

A Federal Court full bench has overturned a lower court's interpretation of an employment contract, finding that it had wrongly taken account of the parties' conduct after it commenced.

A Fair Work Commission member's failure to alert an aged care operator during an unfair dismissal hearing that she might reinstate a nurse to a different operational area represented a denial of natural justice, a full bench has found.

Allowing a late unfair dismissal application because of representative error is less likely to occur where the agent is not professionally qualified, a Fair Work Commission appeal bench has ruled.

A court has ruled that a company did not breach its contractual duty of care for an employee who was injured in an assault during a Christmas party cruise.