A senior FWC member has found that "extraordinary" circumstances justified the tribunal accepting a sacked employee's late unfair dismissal claim, while urging the employer to settle to avoid "further criticism and embarrassment for its conduct" and panning its law firm's role in the case.
The Abbott Government has called for Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten to reject a union push for greater access to the financial details of employers during bargaining.
The NSW Business Chamber has formally applied for the Fair Work Commission to introduce new rules in modern awards covering more than 500,000 micro businesses that employ fewer than five workers.
Law firm Minter Ellison will earn about $17 million from providing legal services to the Heydon Royal Commission, which will resume public hearings on Thursday.
A union organiser has failed to convince a court that a HSU branch sacked her because she had failed to join a preferred Labor Party faction or because of presumption that she was a lesbian or bis-xual.
Coles Supermarkets is a step closer to putting to ballot a single retail deal covering 80,000 workers, after the Fair Work Commission comprehensively rejected a TWU scope order application for online delivery drivers, finding they were an "integrated and integral part" of the company's retail operations.
The licenced aircraft engineers' union is urging the "liberalisation" of union coverage rules, saying that if they didn't exist at all, the industrial unrest that fuelled the bargaining battle between the union and Qantas might have been diminished before the airline dramatically shut down its operations and locked out its workforce in 2011.
A modern award is set to be stripped of a discriminatory clause that has prevented 13 older employees accessing between 40 and 60 weeks redundancy pay over the past 18 months.
Australia could consider adopting a Kiwi-style statutory good faith obligation after the High Court's finding that there is no implied duty of mutual trust and confidence in employment contracts, according to a senior law academic.
The Department of Employment has crunched the numbers on Australia's 122 modern awards, finding that just half provide for weekend penalty loadings, and 26 rule them out.
