Woolworths has failed in its bid to vary the Retail Award to "clarify" that the instrument covers its burgeoning online fulfilment operations, avoiding potentially significant knock-on effects for the e-commerce, road transport and distribution industries.
In a decision highlighting the difficulties that can arise from agreement clauses linked to awards and the NES, the FWC has handed back Simplot workers' arbitration rights for casual conversion disputes but removed mention of their entitlement to access permanency after nine months.
The NSW IRC has rejected a senior public servant's bid to suppress her suspension for alleged corrupt conduct, holding to the notion of open justice while questioning why she failed to make the application earlier.
A Federal Court majority has today dealt a hammer blow to NSW's and Victoria's pursuit of employers alleged to have avoided long service leave entitlements to casuals, ruling that a tribunal's reading of the Fair Work Act's LSL provision produced an "absurdity" whereby employers received "no warning" they could be held criminally liable for supposed non-payments.
A judge irked by a multinational company's attempt to cast its underpaying subsidiary's award breaches as the court's "alternate interpretation" has imposed a near-maximum fine.
In what it claims is its first litigation seeking to have a holding company found responsible for its subsidiaries' breaches, the FWO has initiated court action against ASX-listed Super Retail Group for self-reported underpayments of more than $1 million that led to an internal audit and backpayments exceeding $50 million that the watchdog says remain short of the mark.
A full Federal Court has knocked back a traffic management company's attempt to overturn the FWC's rejection of a proposed non-union deal and has given it a clip around the ears for the way it ran the case.
The HSU is seeking in a Federal Court action to establish that outsourced kitchen and food services work performed in aged care facilities is covered by the industry's award rather than the lower-paying hospitality award.
A full Federal Court has cleared the way for a police officer injured while on duty to argue the NSW police commissioner acted in a discriminatory manner in demoting then medically discharging him.
The IEU says it will call out non-government schools over a widespread practice of engaging staff and others in key co-curricular roles as "volunteers", after a Queensland college back paid more than $2 million and entered into an enforceable undertaking with the FWO.