Unions and employers have flagged support for permitting award-covered employees to extend their annual leave by taking it at half pay, in what might be the sole area of consensus arising from the work and care tranche of the FWC's modern awards review, but they are yet to agree on "safeguards".
The Federal Court has flayed the Republic of Italy for failing to heed Australian IR laws in its local consulates and has ordered it to pay a $94,000 fine, $7500 compensation and indemnity costs to an administrative employee after it failed to pay him annual leave loading for six years, to keep records in English and to produce the records on demand.
A senior FWC member has delved into arbitral history to offer his own definition of a 'seven day shiftworker' after expressing frustration that there is no "simple" or "unambiguous" description of the term in the many awards it is employed.
A director's argument that he is well qualified to represent his company in an underpayments case has fallen flat, a court citing a "lack of objectivity" as being among the reasons to reject the proposition.
An employer seeking to be covered by an existing agreement could potentially "operate in a better way" if a clause granting five days leave in return for working on three public holidays is removed, but the FWC has found the change would deny employees the chance to use the entitlement as a bargaining chip.
A judge has declined to bundle together an employer's various workplace breaches in ordering it to pay $163,000 in fines to a former worker for stripping his severance pay of more than 500 accumulated annual leave hours.
A former Indian High Commissioner who paid a live-in domestic worker $9 a day to keep his eight-bedroom Canberra home, after he arranged for her "posting" in Australia for the "reception and entertainment of guests", has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 compensation.
The FWC has given coal miner Peabody until Thursday to respond to its suggestion that it adopt "somewhat more neutrally worded" clauses in a proposed agreement that says workers are "required" to work on public holidays.
