A Turnbull Coalition Government, if returned at the July 2 election, will amend the Fair Work Act to make franchisors and parent entities responsible for their franchisees' and subsidiaries' exploitation of vulnerable workers, while increasing penalties tenfold for employers that underpay such workers and fail to keep proper records.
FWC's interest-based dispute resolution approach reaches new stage; Shorten Government would intervene in penalties case; Visa cases now the lion's share of FWO prosecutions; Budget Estimates hearings brought forward; Labor bid to disallow regulation postponed to Wednesday; and Slaters wins new finance deal.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn is calling for tougher laws to force franchises to take responsibility for their franchisees' employment practices, as it pursues three underpayment claims totalling $1 million via the Fels 7-Eleven Wage Fairness Panel, which has now secured payouts of $11 million.
The Federal Circuit Court has ordered a Mahjong club to pay more than $415,000 in compensation for breaching state and federal IR laws and engaging in adverse action when it moved a full-time tea attendant to a part-time role because of his workers' compensation claim.
The Federal Court has imposed a $76,500 penalty on the musicians' union and $17,000 on its former general secretary for breaching financial reporting requirements for the union's national, Melbourne and Sydney branches from 2007 until late 2012.
The Federal Circuit Court has found a recruitment and labour hire company, its director and HR manager knowingly falsified employment records and made unlawful deductions from the wages of cleaners working in Melbourne's Federation Square and Crown Casino.
The Federal Circuit Court has questioned why the FWBC chose not to prosecute the director of a phoenixed bricklaying company that failed to pay correct pay and entitlements to several "daily hire" workers.
A FWC full bench has today acceded to employer requests to change annual leave provisions in modern awards to enable cashing-out of up to two weeks a year and give employers a qualified power to require employees to take "excessive" accruals.
Five weeks after ordering Darwin-based Choong Enterprises to pay the largest-ever court-imposed fine for breaching 457 visa sponsorship obligations, the Federal Court has directed the company to backpay seven of the Filipino workers involved a total of more than $100,000.
In one of the last wages and entitlements cases pursued by the FWBC, a building subcontractor that used a labour-hire company to distance itself from it employment obligations has been fined $145,000 and ordered to backpay $150,000 to more than a dozen workers.
