The award rationalisation process will exempt enterprise awards unless the parties want otherwise; ensure award-free workers remain as such; be based in part on ANZSIC classifications; and be carried out by the AIRC on a sectoral basis and in conjunction with the award simplification process, the Federal Government said today.
The Independent Contractors Bill is unlikely to return to Parliament this year, the Workplace Relations' Minister's representative told a Senate Committee last night.
The TCF Union has begun a FOA case against the purchasers of failed carpet manufacturer Feltex Australia, while both the Office of Workplace Services and the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate have begun investigations into the requirement for its employees to sign AWAs if they want to work for the company's new owner.
The OWS has not launched any prosecutions over the Work Choices AWAs referred to it by the OEA, director Nicholas Wilson told a Senate Estimates hearing today.
Up to half a million workers are paid less than the federal minimum wage, due either to them not being covered by awards or their employers failing to comply with awards, according to research conducted for the Fair Pay Commission.
Just five months after Employment Advocate Peter McIlwain told a Senate committee that every one of a sample of 250 Work Choices AWAs had removed at least one protected award condition, he has today revealed he is no longer conducting that sampling.
The TCFU is concerned that an application to remove redundancy provisions from a mid-term enterprise agreement by a carpet company in receivership signals a push to exploit gaps in the Work Choices 12-month transmission of business rule.
OWS recovers $650,000 from Hunan Industrial; Bench overturns pornography dismissal reinstatement; AFPC nail in coffin for anti Work Choices campaign, says PM; Tim McDonald joins Joe Hockey's office; Cook leaves Clayton Utz for Minters; PSA moves with the times; and Debate to launch AIER in NSW.
Research commissioned by the Fair Pay Commission shows that just 20% of companies, concentrated in five industry sectors, account for virtually all low-paid employment.
