The newly-announced review of the 1973 Maternity Leave Act provides an opportunity for the Federal Government to resume its role as a pacesetter, according to Sydney University's Professor Marian Baird.
Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese this morning confirmed his determination to make working conditions a major battleground in the upcoming Federal election with his introduction of a private member's bill aimed at erasing the gap between directly-employed and labour hire workers.
Labor's plan to give the FWC the power to deal with employee-like forms of work has been designed to avoid the deficiencies in domestic and overseas models that highly-flexible platforms have been able to readily evade, according to Shadow IR Minister Tony Burke.
The NSW Supreme Court has backed the State government's use of Public Health Orders to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for certain categories of workers, dismissing arguments that the directions compromised objectors' "right" to choose what they put in their bodies.
BHP's announcement that its workforce will have to be vaccinated by the end of January has failed to win support from the miners' union, with a State leader championing the alternative of education and incentives while pointing out that the company is not the direct employer of most of its workers.
The BCA has called for government, business and unions to collaborate on the best model to establish paid family and domestic violence leave as a universal employment right.
The Morrison Government has committed to reintroducing the major projects greenfields agreement provisions it removed from the IR Omnibus Bill, while employer organisations are pushing it to revive other jettisoned elements that would have overhauled enterprise bargaining and the award system.
Victoria's Andrews Labor Government has allocated $9.6 million to develop a new "fast track model" for hearing wage theft cases in the State's Magistrates' Court.
Victoria's Andrews Labor Government will move to reduce average annual public sector wage increases from 3% to 2% in Thursday's State budget, spurring the AEU to strike a deal before the policy begins on January 1.
