A FWC senior member who once served as Fortescue's HR manager has observed in the course of granting its bid to transfer outsourced workers to a direct-employment deal that doing the same work for lesser conditions "inevitably" leads to discontent and would be "unfair".
The IEU in announcing a strike in NSW and ACT Catholic schools next Friday has rejected claims it has already agreed on everything but a pay rise of up to 15%, saying the "malaise has set in" for teachers struggling with high workloads and staff shortages.
The UK Low Pay Commission has increased its wage floor by 6.6% to £9.50 ($16.80) as part of its plan to raise the minimum to two-thirds of median earnings by 2024.
Unions have today told the FWC's minimum wage panel that their biggest concern is that low-paid workers will go "further backwards" in the coming year due to continuing inflation and price increases.
Consumer prices are now rising at more than double the pace of private sector rates of pay excluding bonuses, which increased by 2.4% annually in the March quarter, unchanged from the December quarter, according to the ABS.
In the face of criticism from a peak employer body, Labor has maintained its support for an increase in the minimum wage matching the current inflation rate of 5.1%, while hinting that it will make further announcements before the Federal election on Saturday week.
As wage stagnation and cost-of-living issues continue to feature in the federal election campaign, a new report shows Australia has experienced the greatest deceleration in real pay growth in the OECD since 2013, despite its relatively strong employment growth and low unemployment, suggesting that policy and institutional factors are the main culprit, rather than market forces.
In a rare Federal Court ruling on reasonable additional hours, a large employer faces penalties for numerous Fair Work Act and award breaches after being found to have employed a recently-arrived "third-world" migrant on a 50-hour week in which shifts began at 2am.
The RBA has today raised interest rates for the first time in more than a decade, due to a rapid increase in inflation and "evidence that wages growth is picking up".
The NTEU says its decision to boost university pay claims from 12% over three years to 15% reflects new realities of skyrocketing inflation and workloads that are going "through the roof" following mass job losses during the height of the pandemic.
