Closing Loopholes 2 provisions that substantially increase penalties for breaching the Fair Work Act should prompt employers to consider boosting their investment in payroll systems and checking compliance, Adelaide University Professor of Law Andrew Stewart says.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has this morning introduced legislation to ensure that employers that flout right to disconnect "stop orders" cannot face criminal charges.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke intends to amend the Closing Loopholes No 2 legislation so that "employee-like" workers in the gig economy and in road transport cannot "double-dip" in the federal and state IR systems.
A court has ordered a cafe to pay a teenage worker $7300 compensation, including $6000 for hurt and humiliation, after it took unlawful adverse action because of his temporary disability when it dismissed him for calling in sick due to a chest infection.
Shine Lawyers says the exclusion of thousands of SDA members from its McDonald's class action will "inform future interplay" between union and non-union representative proceedings, while a full court ruling has set a "powerful precedent" for using collective action to protect workers' rights.
In a full bench decision exploring what constitutes work-related conduct, essential services provider Ventia has failed to knock out the reinstatement of a firefighter who shared an Only Fans video and a meme showing three naked women in a "sickos" Facebook group of current and former colleagues.
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 Victorian Government, the State's Trades Hall and the ASU are calling for the Albanese Government to stick to its pre-election commitment to enact a carve-out in the Closing Loopholes Bill so that state wage theft laws can continue to operate.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a kitchen hand who turned up intoxicated in his own time to prepare for his next shift, but has berated the employer over its "failure to exercise basic decency" when leaving him to find his own way home.
