The AIRC has roped three major contract call centre companies into a safety net award that extends minimum standards across one of Australia's fastest-growing outsourcing industries.
Liberal backbencher Andrew Robb, who is heading the Howard Government's committee to sell the second wave IR changes to the public, today drew on his experience in bitter industrial disputes when he was head of the National Farmers Federation to make the case for further "evolutionary" deregulation of the labour market.
The Federal Government's right to recover funds advanced to insolvent companies to pay employee entitlements under its GEERS scheme has been thrown into doubt by a Federal Court decision.
Mitsubishi is pioneering a new way of managing its temporary labour pool, with casual workers' loadings being accrued into a fund they can use if they need time off.
In the latest skirmish between John Holland and the CFMEU (construction division), the Federal Court yesterday refused the company's application for an injunction and secondary boycott damages over industrial action on a tram-track replacement project in Melbourne's CBD.
Parliament's heavy legislative programme means some of the Federal Government's IR bills listed for this week won't now be looked at again until, at the earliest, the sitting period beginning September 5.
HREOC has recommended the Howard Government require employers to report regularly on their employment of people with disability, in an interim report released today.
It's time for farmers' organisations to form a pact with unions with a view to boosting the skills and productivity of the rural workforce and moving away from the "cycle of low pay" that is hampering the sector's development, according to a farming think tank.
Reinstatement order stands in redundancy decision; Government IR ad bill $5 million so far, says ALP; SA teachers put revised deal to government; and ACTU calls for AWA ban for young workers.
The Federal Government's second-wave IR proposals will not, as the Prime Minister promised, end "the era of the select few making decisions for the many". Rather, it will result in a highly complex system of partisan regulation hard to match in the industrialised world, according to an article in the latest Australian Bulletin of Labour.
