The AIRC has outlined the steps required for employers to make an enterprise agreement directly with employees, after twice rejecting the application of a company seeking to ratify a deal under s170LK.
In the wake of last week's leak of the initial report prepared by a work and family taskforce, Prime Minister John Howard has today rejected claims his Government failed to respond to the advice in the document.
A tribunal has allowed a corrective services agency to discriminate on the basis of sex for a five-year recruitment drive aimed at attracting more female officers to the job, in one of several anti-discrimination exemptions granted recently in two States.
Rugby League Players Association wins registration as a union; Pollies' super comes back to the field; Termination and Cole legislation reaches Senate; OECD visiting Australia for mature workers' study; Halfpenny remembered in Senate; AIRC refuses security deal; Tasmania's Watling yet to be replaced; and AWU magazine delayed.
Australia's longest IR battle continues in the Federal Court next week, with Rio Tinto seeking to overturn an AIRC order that it give preference of employment to 16 sacked Blair Athol coal miners at its nearby Hail Creek mine.
In an embarrassment for the Howard Government, a leaked interdepartmental committee report on work and family for the Prime Minister canvasses giving mothers the right to return to work part-time after giving birth and redesigning the Baby Bonus to "mimic" a 14-week paid maternity leave scheme and reduce inequities in the current system.
Employers have given qualified support to the deal between the Australian Democrats and the Federal Government that should allow passage of the Government's transmission of business bill.
