Awards do not adequately cover visual artists and the "preferable solution" is for the FWC to create a new award, the ACTU says in its submission to the modern awards review, while also recommending the Government extend the Closing Loopholes Bill's "employee-like" definition to non-digital platform workers.
The FWC has today launched the next stage of its gender pay equity research, in which it will examine a dozen awards covering highly-feminised sectors to uncover indicators of gender-based undervaluation of minimum rates, ahead of the 2023-24 annual wage review.
A court has ordered a cafe to pay a teenage worker $7300 compensation, including $6000 for hurt and humiliation, after it took unlawful adverse action because of his temporary disability when it dismissed him for calling in sick due to a chest infection.
Award wage increases have responded to rather than contributed to higher price inflation, and although the tight labour market has brought higher pay growth, it is "not enough to be a threat to slowing price inflation", according to a leading labour market economist.
A FWC full bench has refused to extend a farm's 16-year-old deal for 12 weeks beyond next month's sunsetting of zombie agreements, describing the application as an effort to pay below-award rates for "one more" onion-picking season.
A security company has been ordered to pay $80,000 to a former employee assaulted by current All-Australian AFL captain Toby Greene nearly a decade ago, a court finding that he could have claimed insurance for "permanent disablement" but for the employer failing to pay his superannuation on time.
University research commissioned by the FWC has identified 29 "large, highly feminised" and probably undervalued occupations covered by 13 modern awards that it might spotlight in the current annual wage review, in response to the Secure Jobs' imperative to address unequal remuneration and gender undervaluation in minimum rates of pay.
A judge has declined to bundle together an employer's various workplace breaches in ordering it to pay $163,000 in fines to a former worker for stripping his severance pay of more than 500 accumulated annual leave hours.
A former Indian High Commissioner who paid a live-in domestic worker $9 a day to keep his eight-bedroom Canberra home, after he arranged for her "posting" in Australia for the "reception and entertainment of guests", has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 compensation.
Shine and RAFFWU are preparing a class action against KFC to win compensation for potentially tens of thousands of workers allegedly denied proper rest breaks, weeks after the Federal Court slammed the SDA over its approach to McDonald's rest breaks litigation and decided its case should run concurrently with an earlier Shine/RAFFWU proceeding.
