New DEWR data has undercut RBA warnings about the risks of a wage-price spiral, indicating that private sector bargained wage growth remains anchored below 4% a year.
Queensland Catholic school teachers and support staff have rejected an employer deal by a narrow margin after the IEU labelled it "punitive" and warned of major cuts, while staff in Religious Institute and Edmund Rice schools have convincingly voted up their unilateral offer.
A FWC full bench has confirmed that it can only approve enterprise agreements that include rates of pay, because their absence prevents it determining whether the deal passes the BOOT.
The chair of the ACTU's price gouging inquiry, former ACCC chair Alan Fels, has told a public hearing this is a "missing piece" in Australia's inflation story and there is a lot of resistance to the message that it is being driven by "prices themselves", while the Australia Institute says corporate profits must fall.
Productivity has far exceeded wage growth in mining and agriculture, but they have largely expanded together across the rest of the economy, and "productivity remains the key to continued wage growth and long-term prosperity", according to a new Productivity Commission report.
The Albanese Government's legislation to empower the FWC to set minimum standards for "employee-like" gig economy workers will apply only to work performed through digital labour platforms, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke will reveal in a speech to the National Press Club tomorrow.
The Australian Public Service Commission has tabled a revised APS pay offer that lifts total increases from 10.5% over three years to 11.2% and makes a 2.29% "re-alignment payment" for employees in some agencies as part of a shift to service-wide common dates for wage rises.
The Remuneration Tribunal has awarded a 4% pay rise for federal parliamentarians and the most senior public servants after noting that increases awarded over the past decade had been "conservative", including zero in 2020 and 2021 and 2.75% last year.
In a significant decision on directors' liability for underpayments, a court has found that although the co-founder of Chatime was unaware the bubble-tea chain was in breach of workplace laws, he understood enough about award obligations around casual and weekend penalty rates to be considered complicit.
In figures that don't align with the RBA's warnings about a wage-price spiral, new ABS figures show private sector rates of pay excluding bonuses are rising at an unchanged 3.8% a year.