As Telstra becomes the latest to face a class action on behalf of employees refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccination policies, more than a 100 mainly healthcare, education and construction workers are discontinuing their challenge to Victoria's vaccine mandate.
A NSW Upper House inquiry has called for parliamentarians to reject legislation that would remove the presumption that workers in frontline industries who acquired COVID-19 did so at work, giving them speedy access to support through the workers compensation system.
The FWC has rejected a costs application against a worker who missed her employer's deadline to register for COVID-19 jabs because she was holding out for the Pfizer vaccine, at a time when its south-western Sydney location was subject to extra lockdown restrictions.
The Victorian Supreme Court has thrown out an interlocutory bid to quash State Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton's public health orders that mandate workplace vaccinations and to stop him issuing further orders.
Victoria's Supreme Court is this morning livestreaming a hearing into a major challenge to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, with more than 100 health, construction and education workers and others arguing it breaches the State's Human Rights Charter.
A Supreme Court judge has slapped down a FWC presidential member's "clarion call" for Australians to "vigorously" reject the notion of mandatory COVID-19 jabs, questioning her assertions about the efficacy of vaccines and declaring it is not her role to challenge the validity or appropriateness of public health orders.
The NSW Supreme Court has backed the State government's use of Public Health Orders to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for certain categories of workers, dismissing arguments that the directions compromised objectors' "right" to choose what they put in their bodies.
The Fair Work Act's stand down provisions enabled employers to shift the pandemic's economic risks to employees, according to new analysis by IR law experts Anthony Forsyth and Andrew Stewart, who also say legal uncertainty about the provisions could imperil the stand down strategies used by companies such as Qantas as business gradually resumes.
Vaccination mandate for WA resources sector; CFMMEU preparing to expel rioting members; FWO claws back underpayments for hotel quarantine security guards; High Court to consider jurisdictional question.
The FWO is reminding employers other than small businesses that they have until today to assess whether their casual workers are eligible to be offered permanent employment.
