The Fair Work Commission has upheld the RSPCA's dismissal of an executive manager for leaking to the media, providing confidential documents to his union and undermining his chief executive, describing his conduct as "reprehensible" and "duplicitous".
New analysis by the ACTU argues that the real agenda of the Commission of Audit's suggested changes to the national minimum wage is to reduce the pay safety net for 1.5 million workers who receive award minimum rates.
The Federal Court has set aside enterprise agreements for three private hospitals, finding the group's corporate manager had no authority to make them.
The ACTU has called for the Heydon Royal Commission to investigate all political slush funds, after the revelations of NSW Liberal Party donations that have emerged from the state's Independent Commission Against Corruption.
The FWC has ordered the TWU to postpone member-endorsed industrial action against Linfox Armaguard because the vagueness of the notices to the company would have required it to respond with "extreme measures" such as organising flying squads to replace workers.
Advocating a much more severe cut to the Coalition's paid parental leave scheme than Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on Tuesday, the National Audit Commission has recommended the government cap payments at average weekly earnings and plough the resulting savings into child care assistance.
The Abbott Government's Audit Commission report, released today, recommends axing the FWC's role in setting minimum wages, moving over a decade to a new, lower "minimum wage benchmark" of 44% of average weekly earnings, and allowing "regional variations" that would open up a gap of $100 a week between workers in Tasmania and those in four other states and territories.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has conceded that savings "won't be vast" from cutting the maximum payment under its paid parental leave scheme to $50,000, while the Greens are pushing for the new regime to be fully-funded by the Coalition's proposed levy on business.
A Fair Work Commission full bench has ruled that it was not unreasonable for a global industrial software company to retrench an Australian technical project manager with one day's notice instead of redeploying him to an overseas position, overturning a deputy president's decision that his dismissal was unfair.
Business groups are pushing the Abbott Government to drop a requirement in its Fair Work amendments that the FWC take account of prevailing industry standards in approving employer proposals to resolve deadlocked greenfields negotiations, in submissions to a Senate inquiry.
