The High Court has today unanimously held that Qantas took unlawful adverse action against nearly 2000 former ground crew when it outsourced their jobs at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when their agreements were due to nominally expire.
Just a month after declaring its intention to delete "Schedule X" unpaid pandemic leave provisions, the recent COVID-19 resurgence has spurred the FWC to extend their operation in a handful of health and care awards, coinciding with the Federal Government reviving the pandemic leave disaster payments.
The FWC is set to pull the shutters down on what academics hailed as its "bold" decision to give more than four million award-covered workers access to unpaid leave and twice as much annual leave on half-pay in response to pandemic uncertainties.
The FWC's minimum wage panel has given Prime Minister Anthony Albanese until Friday to lodge a submission to this year's annual wage review, but has asked him to keep it to 10 pages.
In a sign of the continuing uncertainty surrounding COVID-19's impact on workplaces, the FWC will consider extending millions of award-covered employees' entitlement to two weeks unpaid "pandemic leave" to the end of June next year.
The ACTU's bid for 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave has been bolstered by new FWC-commissioned research indicating that a third of recent agreements have a paid entitlement and half of those deals provide at least the quantum the peak body is seeking.
The FWC's minimum wage panel has revealed that it is developing a consumer price index for low paid households and a budget of discretionary items required to participate in society, while one of its members says the pandemic will make that already difficult task even more complex.
The insights gained from the rapid shift to working from home during COVID-19 could lead to the adoption of a "genuine consultation" requirement under the Fair Work Act's "right to request" flexibility that might start "a conversation aimed at reaching a mutually suitable arrangement", according to a new paper by two leading IR academics.