The President of the AIRC, Justice Geoffrey Giudice, has warned that welfare payments might have to be cut to provide an incentive to work under Work Choices, as employees without bargaining power lose existing protections and the new Fair Pay Commission slows the growth in minimum wages. He also said the new IR laws might need amending to both strengthen bargaining rights and water down excessively-complex rules for authorising protected action.
IR has become one of the dominant issues in the South Australian election, with the Rann Government highlighting its opposition to the Federal Government's Work Choices legislation as one of the key differences between the parties ahead of tomorrow's vote.
News Ltd and its contractor Group 4 Securitas have been ordered to pay a total of $1.9 million in damages to a former security guard subject to extreme bullying and intimidation by his supervisor.
AMMA chief executive Steve Knott has today appealed to the Federal Government's Award Review Taskforce not to create a single award to cover the entire mining industry, while the Federal Opposition has equivocated on the fate of AWAs if it takes power at the next election.
SA employers have 27 days to apply for exemption to minimum wage; Esso Bass Strait agreements confirm 7-day rosters; Unions plan mass rally against Work Choices on June 28; AMA steps up pressure over Work Choices medical certificates; Women lift union density in the UK; and UK discrimination laws remove redundancy age limit.
The Department of Education, Science and Training's 1,800 employees will have access to $100 a week of school holiday child care assistance, while new processes will be introduced to address poorly performing workers, under the organisation's new agreement with the CPSU and MEAA.
Security guards in Victoria will receive a 3.2% work value increase, while crowd controllers' work value has grown to such an extent that they will get a 6.5% rise, following an AIRC ruling.
Seventy-two maintenance workers who took industrial action at a Central Queensland mine last year over what they claimed were appalling camp conditions are facing fines of up to $18,000 each under Federal Court proceedings initiated by DEWR.
ACT public school and TAFE teachers held a half-day stopwork today in a bid to break the deadlock in the AEU's long-running pay dispute with the Territory Government.
