Advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman has prompted the Fair Work Commission to set up a full bench to iron out inconsistencies between modern award provisions and the national employment standards, as part of its 4-yearly review.
In what the UFU has hailed as a "huge victory", the Fair Work Commission has refused to terminate two enterprise agreements covering Melbourne's firefighters, finding it would have triggered an "appreciable and unmatched shift" in bargaining power to their employer.
A Federal Court full bench has upheld a finding that the main retail award applies to delivery drivers employed by the online arm of supermarket giant Coles.
A long history of employee complaints and the need to send a strong message to the hair and beauty industry that "it does not pay to underpay workers" has led to a hairdressing chain being fined $70,000 for short-changing an apprentice more than $8,000.
Despite acknowledging the convention that it is a "brave or foolish" FWC member who refuses to follow a full bench ruling, a commissioner has done just that on the way to granting a union's application for a scope order for an agreement to cover workers at one of a building company's four sites.
The Fair Work Commission has held that a Victorian water authority made a "further claim" that contravened its enterprise agreement when it removed a policy providing for employees' personal use of its cars.
The ACTU will push for the Fair Work Commission's four-year modern award review to create a common clause giving more than two million casual workers the right to become permanent employees.
The NUW has demonstrated majority support for it to bargain for an enterprise agreement to cover warehouse employees at one of Cotton On's two Australian distribution centres – despite the company arguing that a single agreement should cover the workers at both sites.
In two separate decisions, the Fair Work Commission has ruled that it has the power to arbitrate on the use of mobile phones at BHP Coal's Bowen Basin mines and that a tram driver was unfairly sacked after being accused of using his phone while on the road.
