The Albanese Government plans to introduce a bill at the end of the week to remove the threat of criminal penalties from its Closing Loopholes right to disconnect provisions that are slated to pass Parliament today, but the Coalition has pledged to repeal the measures if it wins the next election.
The Federal Court has flayed the Republic of Italy for failing to heed Australian IR laws in its local consulates and has ordered it to pay a $94,000 fine, $7500 compensation and indemnity costs to an administrative employee after it failed to pay him annual leave loading for six years, to keep records in English and to produce the records on demand.
Labour academics analysing the Closing Loopholes No 2 Bill ahead of its expected passage into law say the right to disconnect signals a "momentous societal shift" in the value placed on work, wellbeing and private time, while gig work reforms are "world leading" but they question the narrowing of casuals' pathway to permanency.
A Clive Palmer-owned business must pay a worker almost $40,000 for dismissing him by email along with 125 other employees, claiming he failed to work his hours amid site-wide fraud, theft and dishonesty,, and then asking him to re-apply for his job 20 minutes later.
The Senate this afternoon passed the Closing Loopholes No 2 legislation after accepting amendments advanced by the Albanese Government, the Greens and crossbench senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Lidia Thorpe.
The Albanese Government has put forward a bundle of its own amendments to the Closing Loopholes legislation, including a requirement that collective agreements covering regulated employee-like gig economy workers and road transport workers meet a public interest test.
A football club's "deficient" investigation and lack of procedural fairness rendered unfair its sacking of a worker for spreading "false and degrading s-xualised rumours" in the workplace, the FWC has found.
The Greens says they have secured support from the Albanese Government and Senate crossbenchers for a legislated right for workers to disconnect from "unreasonable" out-of-hours contact from their employers.