The Fair Work Commission has ruled that a casual conversion right in a company's enterprise agreement extends to labour hire employees and is a "permitted matter" under the Fair Work Act.
The bids by unions for protected action ballots for workers on the massive Gorgon LNG project are on hold for three weeks, after the FWC intervened to bring parties back to the negotiating table.
The Fair Work Commission has approved a new four-year enterprise agreement for Mount Isa Mines that doesn't provide employees with annual pay increases, instead leaving them to the discretion of management.
GM Holden is encouraging workers at its Elizabeth assembly plant in Adelaide to register their interest in taking an uncapped redundancy payout of 3.5 weeks pay for each year of service as it seeks to cut up to 270 jobs by the end of next month.
An FWC full bench has emphasised that the tribunal should take a "global" rather than "line by line" approach when applying the better off overall test to agreements, while in another ruling the Commission has approved a deal with employer undertakings, despite union misgivings that it was originally voted up by only three employees who have since left the company.
The Senate committee inquiring into the federal government's bargaining bill has handed down a report free of any recommendations to improve it, with Coalition senators wanting it passed without amendment and Labor and the Greens calling for its rejection.
There are "promising" early results from a 12-month pilot program that is seeking to speed-up the appeals process in the FWC and reduce parties' costs, according to the tribunal's president, Justice Iain Ross.
The former Labor Government's changes to the modern award objective have made it impossible for 24/7 industries such as hospitality to successfully prosecute cases to abolish penalty rates and should be scrapped, according to the peak body for restaurant employers.
Unions are seeking authorisation for industrial action at the massive Gorgon gas project, after workers employed by its largest contractor resoundingly voted down an agreement that would have provided an extra day off in each 35-day roster cycle.
The head of Networks NSW, which owns the power "poles and wires" entities that are to be privatised if the Coalition wins Saturday's NSW election, is pushing for FWC approval of agreements to be conditional on them undergoing an objective "productivity test" and is backing calls for the creation of a separate FWC appeals jurisdiction.
