New Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching has hailed her former boss at the HSU's Victoria No 1 branch, Diana Asmar, as "inspirational", while thanking other state union leaders for their support.
The Coalition should have sought a "more extensive mandate" on IR and run a more active campaign on the subject during the last election, rather than supplementing the ABCC and ROC bills with a "last minute minor change on CFA volunteers", according to Abbott Government Employment Minister Eric Abetz.
Former trade union royal commissioner and High Court judge Dyson Heydon has emphatically refused to give evidence to a Senate inquiry into legislation to re-establish the ABCC.
The Opposition has hinted that a Shorten Labor Government would axe the Coalition Government's public sector bargaining policy and the 2% wage cap, while 30,000 Victorian public sector employees are set to receive a backdated pay rise after voting up a new agreement.
Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has thrown her weight behind the AiG's bid to delay the April 4 rollout of the contractor driver minimum rates order, warning of adverse effects on the economy, the movement of freight and on the viability of businesses.
A Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal full bench will next Tuesday hear four separate applications seeking to delay the start-date of the contractor driver minimum payments order and challenging the likelihood of it improving road safety.
Employees in Employment Minister Michaelia Cash's department have narrowly voted-up a new enterprise deal that provides a 6% pay increase over three years.
Some 35,000 Department of Human Services employees began voting on Friday on a proposed deal delivering a 2% annual pay rise, while the FWC has recently approved agreements for three mid-sized APS agencies providing the same quantum to about 8,500 employees.
Key crossbench senators have sided with Labor and the Greens to delay a vote on legislation to re-establish the ABCC until at least the middle of March.
Welcome ceremonies for new FWC members have revealed that one of the new appointees fought so hard for a provision in the Fair Work Act that it was informally named after him, while another told of her "baptism of fire" when she took up her IR legal career with an employer-clientele law firm in the wake of it running the landmark Dollar Sweets case.