Hospitality industry employers have won approval to roll up overtime, penalty and split-shift rates for full-time higher-paid workers after a FWC full bench rejected union concerns that changing the award for a small cohort could leave a broader group of employees worse off.
Higher-paid hospitality workers' overtime and penalty payments would be rolled up into loaded rates under an award variation proposed by employers in response to COVID-19's impact on the industry.
A traffic management company seeking a deal paying night workers shift loadings instead of higher overtime rates even if they don't take over from a preceding shift has lost its appeal bid after refusing to give an undertaking to overcome the deficiency.
Retail employers and their part-time employees will be able to agree to extra hours by text message or email, under changes to the industry award that followed a request from the IR minister.
The FWO has begun prosecuting retailer Woolworths for allegedly substantially underpaying salaried managers who had been subject to annualised salaries.
CIMIC Group subsidiary UGL plans to sue the AMWU and CFMMEU for allegedly breaching financial services laws when they arranged to fund a class action against it, after the Federal Court cleared the way for it to use details revealed in the funding agreement in its pursuit.
Two franchisee directors of a Chatime bubble tea store have had most of their underpayment penalties suspended after a court accepted they acted on their franchisor's advice that they could pay age-based flat rates.
If the FWC incorporates loaded rates in hospitality and retail awards after a referral from IR Minister Christian Porter, it is likely to involve a range of such rates rather than a single one, the tribunal's president indicated in a statement today.
BHP Billiton is sounding out employees in its fast-growing in-house labour hire operation on "simple, safety net" agreements that include a guarantee to pay 5% more than the award to full-time and part-time employees.
