Award wage increases have responded to rather than contributed to higher price inflation, and although the tight labour market has brought higher pay growth, it is "not enough to be a threat to slowing price inflation", according to a leading labour market economist.
A FWC full bench has refused to extend a farm's 16-year-old deal for 12 weeks beyond next month's sunsetting of zombie agreements, describing the application as an effort to pay below-award rates for "one more" onion-picking season.
A security company has been ordered to pay $80,000 to a former employee assaulted by current All-Australian AFL captain Toby Greene nearly a decade ago, a court finding that he could have claimed insurance for "permanent disablement" but for the employer failing to pay his superannuation on time.
University research commissioned by the FWC has identified 29 "large, highly feminised" and probably undervalued occupations covered by 13 modern awards that it might spotlight in the current annual wage review, in response to the Secure Jobs' imperative to address unequal remuneration and gender undervaluation in minimum rates of pay.
A judge has declined to bundle together an employer's various workplace breaches in ordering it to pay $163,000 in fines to a former worker for stripping his severance pay of more than 500 accumulated annual leave hours.
A former Indian High Commissioner who paid a live-in domestic worker $9 a day to keep his eight-bedroom Canberra home, after he arranged for her "posting" in Australia for the "reception and entertainment of guests", has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 compensation.
Shine and RAFFWU are preparing a class action against KFC to win compensation for potentially tens of thousands of workers allegedly denied proper rest breaks, weeks after the Federal Court slammed the SDA over its approach to McDonald's rest breaks litigation and decided its case should run concurrently with an earlier Shine/RAFFWU proceeding.
The RBA says several new early indicators it has developed in-house are helping it to build a "fuller view" of wage movements ahead of the release of official figures.
The FWC will next Tuesday hear responses to its draft timetable for reviewing modern awards to update job security provisions, address work & care issues, weigh whether it can make them easier to use; and consider coverage of the arts and culture sector.
A FWC full bench has confirmed that it can only approve enterprise agreements that include rates of pay, because their absence prevents it determining whether the deal passes the BOOT.