The Fair Work Commission has terminated a Work Choices agreement between the AWU and a Spotless subsidiary that saved the employer about $2 million a year in wages and penalty rates.
A FWC full bench has today acceded to employer requests to change annual leave provisions in modern awards to enable cashing-out of up to two weeks a year and give employers a qualified power to require employees to take "excessive" accruals.
Tensions over the new national agreement covering Coles supermarkets has boiled over into angry public exchanges between officials from the SDA and the meatworkers' union.
The stevedoring award contains "inflated" penalty rates that are out of proportion to those applying in other industries, a senior FWC member has found in a decision in which he was overruled by a full bench majority.
Modern award transfer of business provisions that guarantee a new employer's recognition of prior service are set to be adjusted after a FWC full bench found they conflict with the National Employment Standards.
The AiG and unions are at odds over time in lieu and make-up pay provisions in modern awards, with the employer group critical of an AMWU push to calculate TOIL at overtime rates and the ACTU in turn arguing the AiG's proposal would reduce existing entitlements.
The NSW Business Chamber has formally applied for the Fair Work Commission to introduce new rules in modern awards covering more than 500,000 micro businesses that employ fewer than five workers.
A four-member Fair Work Commission full bench has ruled that the tribunal has the power to insert in modern awards a provision penalising employers for late payment of wages, but has left it to another bench to decide next week whether the proposal has merit.
Hospitality and retail employers have detailed the substantial cuts they are seeking to penalty rates in the FWC's four-yearly modern award review, and say they will rely on expert evidence from a Deloitte economist to back their case.
