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A Chinese company that brought 24 workers to Australia to dismantle machinery and paid them just a portion of their total wage during the four-plus months they were here – with the balance then delivered on their return to China – has been fined $14,850.

A new paper recommends changes to the Fair Work Act to provide stronger protections for students undertaking vocational placements and work experience, suggesting they have become the new "phenomenon" of the workplace in the 21st century following the casualisation of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Coalition has largely succeeded in neutralising IR as a 2013 federal election issue by promising to retain – at least for one term – Labor's Fair Work framework, but Australia's two major parties are still going to the September 7 poll with some significant policy differences, including on paid parental leave, right of entry, and construction industry regulation. Workplace Express compares their IR policies and those of the Greens, whose future hold on the Senate balance of power is uncertain.

The Federal Court has stayed a $300,000 Federal Magistrates Court penalties and backpay order against a call centre, while imposing a conditional security payment, acknowledging the employer's chances of a successful appeal are "not strong".

Fair Work Building and Construction chief executive Leigh Johns has challenged those who say the inspectorate should have intervened in the Grocon Supreme Court proceedings to identify the powers it could have relied upon, while the main players are about to head back for more talks with FWA President, Justice Iain Ross.

Grocon Constructors has shown the Victorian Supreme Court graphic footage of CFMEU protesters pushing back police horses in Melbourne's CBD this morning in its successful bid to extend a ban on union officials coming within 50 metres of the Emporium site.

The ACTU has called on the panel reviewing the Fair Work Act to discard submissions from peak employer bodies, on the basis that they have failed to address the terms of reference and are seeking to reinstate features of Work Choices. Meanwhile, BHP Billiton has urged the panel to throw out union proposals to specifically allow entry to lunchrooms and to recognise the legitimacy of pattern bargaining.

The Victorian Supreme Court has ruled that a senior employee is not required to re-pay a 12-week redundancy payout that her former employer wanted back after discovering it had no legal obligation to make it.

Two companies and their directors linked to a Perth café that failed to pay wages for months to three Chinese 457 visa workers, provided no payslips and kept no employment records have been ordered by the Federal Magistrates Court to pay almost $30,000 in penalties.

The Federal Court has fined a company and its managing director $30,000 for signing seven employees up to individual flexibility agreements with unlawful terms and threatening with dismissal or loss of shifts employees who resisted. Meanwhile, the ACTU has predicted that a FWA research study will reveal widespread abuse of the individual deals.