Awards/agreements page 25 of 141

The FWC has moved to correct two perceived wrinkles in the award covering salaried IT professionals, engineers, scientists and gaming sector employees that have led to some being paid as little as $22 per hour and "excessive litigation" over its disputed coverage of unfair dismissal applicants.

An employer that used the wrong company name in its bargaining notice has failed to convince the FWC that it amounted to a minor procedural or technical error that it should overlook when considering whether to approve its agreement.

A FWC member has expressed concern that a new model award clause preventing employers from directing workers to take unpaid leave during shutdowns will lead to more disputes over rejected annual leave requests.

A listed company's "extraordinary" admission that it failed to correct workers who mistakenly believed they had to be union members to negotiate a deal has torpedoed its bid to terminate its agreement.

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.

The FWC has granted an extension for the Albanese Government, unions and employers involved in the aged care work value case to respond to 50 questions posed late last year, such as whether they agree with a provisional view not to realign rates in a way that would hand the sector's registered nurses a 35% pay increase and whether they should be moved into the aged care award.

The FWC will start consultations this month on the statement of principles to underpin the Secure Jobs Act's less "prescriptive" approach to considering whether enterprise deals have been genuinely agreed, which it is required to finalise by early June.

A FWC full bench has overturned the approval of the Mantle Group's Hot Wok agreement, accusing it of "deliberate manipulation of the statutory process of making enterprise agreements" and is considering referring the company's senior HR manager to the AFP for potential criminal prosecution for deliberately providing false or misleading information to the tribunal.

Wages in private sector agreements approved in the September quarter remained stuck at 2.9% a year, defying labour shortages and inflationary pressure, according to DEWR data.

The FWC has today approved an agreement for the second time, after a "computer glitch" corrupted the formatting of the deal endorsed by the tribunal the first time around.