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As a global robotics report warns that the main occupations production workers are moving to are among the most vulnerable to automation, an Australian academic is urging the adoption of policies to ensure disadvantaged workers are not left behind.

An employer is not obliged to offer voluntary redundancies to workers who it will place in similar roles at the same pay when it reconfigures its product lines.

The AAT has ruled against a bid for a FEG advance by an employee of a failed company, finding that his role as a director rendered him ineligible.

The FWC has held that an agreement negotiated with two train drivers but set to cover an entire transferred workforce on the Roy Hill Pilbara mine network was not genuinely agreed, but it is asking whether this is a minor error that can be dealt with via an undertaking, "odd as that may be".

The FWC has rejected a multi-pronged attempt by four retrenched dockworkers to establish that they were not genuinely redundant, finding their employer's offer to re-engage them as casuals did not detract from its need to reduce its full-time workforce.

Class action law firm Adero says it believes labour supplier One Key Workforce wound up owing more than 2000 mineworkers on casual contracts far more than the $38 million sum estimated by administrators, as it prepares to file a claim holding its parent company liable as their "true employer".

The FWC has ordered a labour hire company to return a casual mineworker to her former position at a BHP Coal mine, despite late evidence that the mining giant that ordered her removal won't consider reinstatement.

The MEAA has called for the ACCC to block the proposed merger of the Nine Network with Fairfax Media on public interest grounds, while demanding the retention of employees' terms and conditions as the new entity seeks $50 million in savings.

The Fair Work Commission acceded to a bid by mining giants to terminate a coal loading agreement after concluding that a system of "self-directed" work teams that constrains management prerogative "needs to go".

A labour hire employee who lost an offer to shift to direct employment with his host employer after IR staff became aware of his dual identity has failed in unfair dismissal claims against both parties, in a ruling in which the FWC also rejected his joint employment arguments.