The owners of a Coffee Club café franchise have been fined more than $180,000 for taking advantage of a desperate 457 skilled visa worker who they first refused to pay and then forced to hand back $18,000 under threat of ending his sponsorship.
The Turnbull Government will seek to win Senate support for two of its workplace Bills before the Federal Parliament rises for the winter break on June 22.
The Federal Circuit Court has ordered a company to pay more than $7,000 in unpaid wages and super to a student visa holder after hearing evidence of a deliberate scheme to exploit young international students working in Australia.
An FWC full bench will next month deal with an attempt by the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union to intervene in a bid to terminate the 2011 Coles Supermarkets agreement, before a 10-day hearing of the substantive case in October.
The Federal Court has reserved judgment on whether hundreds of charity fundraisers for a major marketing agency can mount a class action to pursue it for alleged sham contracting.
A Senate inquiry's largely bipartisan support for the Turnbull Government's Protecting Vulnerable Workers Bill is a "striking indication" of how far the debate on the issue has advanced, according to Adelaide University Professor of Law, Andrew Stewart.
The Federal Court has refused an application by a company to be represented by its operations manager rather than a lawyer, ruling that the manager lacked "the necessary degree of objectivity and skill" required to conduct the case.
An accountancy firm that knowingly failed to maintain current award rates of pay in its MYOB payroll system has been found accessorially liable for an employer's underpayments.
Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says low penalties are creating a "perverse incentive" for a "dangerous minority" of employers to use inaccurate or incomplete records to conceal underpayments, forcing the watchdog to use novel, labour-intensive strategies to piece together employees' working hours.
Caltex has established a $20 million "assistance fund" for franchise employees who have been underpaid, but insists that its franchising model does not need fixing.
