The Federal Court has today thrown out an urgent interlocutory bid to stop Qantas Group dismissing more than 20 employees who failed to meet its mid-November vaccination deadline.
National Cabinet has today decided against reducing isolation periods for coronavirus-positive workers from seven days to five, while it has also abandoned plans to allow under-18s to drive forklifts, as governments continue to discuss ways to ameliorate worker shortages in the supply chain.
The FWC has "reluctantly" applied the brakes to the NSW Government's COVID-19 vaccination mandate for some rail workers after finding it has an obligation to consider two unions' post-implementation challenges to the policy.
Unions are threatening to walk off jobs that risk the safety of essential workers, after what they claim is the Morrison Government's refusal to cooperate on the workplace response to the Omicron strain of COVID-19 and amid a continuing dire shortage of one of the "basic" frontline tools - Rapid Antigen Tests.
Workers across a range of critical industries will be permitted to attend work despite being close contacts of a COVID-19 case, once they receive a negative rapid antigen test result, following a national cabinet decision today, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The FWC has declined to extend time for an unvaccinated worker who claimed he lodged his claim late because of the theft of 45 one-kilogram silver bars from his home, while it has upheld a nursing home's sacking of a maintenance manager who failed to comply with a State Government inoculation mandate.
A senior FWC member has invited "relevant authorities" to investigate a potentially fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination certificate supplied to an employer by a worker claiming to have been unlawfully stood down.
BHP says it will ask 35 Mt Arthur coal mine workers why it should not sack them if they continue to defy its vaccination mandate after engaging in a fresh FWC-assisted consultation process.
Qantas says it will put a new agreement to international flight attendants for a vote next week without the FAAA's support, after the FWC rejected the union's arguments it would be unfair after extended standdowns and while it seeks to continue bargaining.
