After chairing negotiations between resources giant Esso and the AWU, long-serving FWC member Bernie Riordan has today issued a recommendation that the company provide a 22% pay rise over almost four years to end a decade-long deadlock for its Bass Strait platform operators and that in return the workforce move to a new roster.
The CPSU is recommending the Albanese Government's "bolstered" final pay offer to its members, after winning an additional lump sum payment that brings the first year's 4% increase forward by 12 weeks.
The Minns Labor Government has introduced IR changes that "remove the power to cap wages for good" and replace it with a "mutual gains bargaining" system, while also boosting the NSW IRC's powers and restoring it as an integrated court and tribunal.
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.
Train drivers delivering iron ore to export ports from BHP's Pilbara mines will "pause" the protected bans due to start tomorrow as "a gesture of good faith" ahead of the company preparing to put a revised bargaining offer to a ballot.
The first round of protected industrial action by train drivers at BHP's Pilbara iron ore operations will kick off tomorrow with limited bans after talks yesterday failed to deliver a breakthrough.
A FWC full bench has upheld a ruling that BHP must continue to deduct a $60 weekly housing subsidy from remote mineworkers' pay, saying that the company halted the deductions to remove tenancy rights, rather than as an "act of gratuitous generosity".
ANZ's plan to "force" workers to return to the office for half of the working week is "short-sighted", "antiquated" and "punitive", according to the Finance Sector Union, which is also urging members at the RBA to reject a second unilateral bargaining offer.
Shine Lawyers says the exclusion of thousands of SDA members from its McDonald's class action will "inform future interplay" between union and non-union representative proceedings, while a full court ruling has set a "powerful precedent" for using collective action to protect workers' rights.
Woolworths Group breached good faith bargaining obligations by circulating a Big W deal struck with the SDA and the AWU before giving RAFFWU a chance to consider it, but the FWC has refused to delay the vote as it would not significantly alter the offer.
