A labour law expert has told a Senate inquiry he supports the Albanese Government's Bill to remove criminal sanctions from right to disconnect laws but he believes there should be a new requirement for all agreements to contain a disconnection rights term.
The FWC has identified 11 award provisions, extending to overtime, reasonable additional hours and on-call, that might interact with new terms to entrench the right to disconnect, ahead of the new laws taking effect in late August.
The ACTU is urging the FWC to include in a model delegates' rights clause an entitlement to ask non-members to join their union and to advocate on their behalf, along with a prohibition on employers dealing directly with workers they are representing in some circumstances.
The FWC is inviting final comment on proposed variations to 147 awards to reflect the elevation of superannuation to a guaranteed NES right under last year's Protecting Worker Entitlements legislation.
A casual real estate agent's application has spurred the FWC to vary the industry's award to clarify working hours and associated car allowances, accepting evidence that he had not been paid for the time involved in travelling up to 100 kilometres directly from home to conduct open inspections.
The FWC no longer plans to deal with workers' right to disconnect during consultations in the work and care arm of its modern awards review, while it has tweaked its timetable and is inviting input by tomorrow afternoon on a survey that includes questions about working from home.
The FSU is backing the requests from 20 CBA workers seeking to extend the life of their zombie AWAs in the wake of a recent full bench finding that one of their colleagues would lose $17,000 in long service leave pay if she reverted to the bank's 2020 agreement.
The ACTU is calling for a boost to casuals' loading, leave entitlements and roster stability, plus the scrapping of individual flexibility agreements, in a submission to the FWC's job security modern awards review, while the ASU and FAAA are seeking an overhaul of airline cabin crew and ground staff awards.
An accountancy firm and its principal must pay penalties totalling almost $70,000 for failing to comply with FWO notices to produce documents linked to to its client's "grossly inadequate" employee record-keeping.
Closing Loopholes 2 provisions that substantially increase penalties for breaching the Fair Work Act should prompt employers to consider boosting their investment in payroll systems and checking compliance, Adelaide University Professor of Law Andrew Stewart says.
