A former NSW IRC president has told an event marking the tribunal's 120th anniversary that limits on its powers and jurisdiction, such as the State Coalition Government's wages cap, hinder its ability to be "a just institution".
NSW unions have called on the Perrottet Coalition Government to loosen the State's public sector pay cap after a Queensland offer to nurses that will deliver 11% in pay rises over three years plus "cost of living top-up payments" of up to 3% a year.
The NSW Opposition has promised today that if it takes power at the March election, it will scrap the decade-old public sector wages cap and replace it with a productivity-based bargaining system.
In a ruling greeted as the first of its kind to treat a gig economy worker as an employee, the family of a food delivery rider killed when hit by a bus has been awarded more than $800,000 compensation.
The Perrottet Government in NSW says it is moving to massively increase fines for unlawful industrial action to send a "message" ahead of a teachers' strike, while a commissioner who blocked part of a PSA strike says it refused to meaningfully engage with the union on wages.
NSW's Perrottet Government has raised its 2.5% wage ceiling to 3% next financial year and up to 3.5% in 2023-24, in the face of incomes falling behind consumer price inflation and unions taking industrial action seeking to scrap the cap.
The IEU in announcing a strike in NSW and ACT Catholic schools next Friday has rejected claims it has already agreed on everything but a pay rise of up to 15%, saying the "malaise has set in" for teachers struggling with high workloads and staff shortages.
NSW Greens have expressed disappointment that Labor MPs have refused to recommend nurse to patient ratios in a Parliamentary regional health inquiry despite previously pursuing it as an election policy, while the NSWNMA says its job is to convince the ALP it is achievable.