The key lesson from last week's Mt Arthur ruling by a five-member FWC full bench is that employers that impose vaccination mandates not required by public health orders must comply with consultation obligations, according to the coal mining union's legal director.
A full Federal Court has dismissed an on-hire worker's bid to overturn a FWC ruling that it could not force a labour hire company to reinstate him to his former job at client CUB, upholding the tribunal's finding giving primacy to the host employer's right to determine who it allowed on its site.
Federal Labor's 'Same Job, Same Pay' legislation introduced into Parliament yesterday has won the endorsement of IR legal expert Anthony Forsyth, who says it represents the "next necessary step" in addressing the undesirable effects of labour hire workers being engaged for lengthy periods on lower wages and conditions than direct employees.
Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese this morning confirmed his determination to make working conditions a major battleground in the upcoming Federal election with his introduction of a private member's bill aimed at erasing the gap between directly-employed and labour hire workers.
Unions have branded further legislation by the Morrison Government to protect migrant workers as "inadequate, given the scale and of nature" of exploitation, a view endorsed by a leading academic researcher.
The TWU's in-principle three-year agreement with Australia Post subsidiary StarTrack will deliver annual wage rises that match CPI increases in the second and third years of the deal if inflation exceeds 3%.
Qantas says it will appeal today's Federal Court finding it breached adverse action provisions in outsourcing the remainder of its ground handling jobs while grappling with the pandemic, maintaining it was motivated "only by lawful commercial reasons".
A FWC bench has scrapped a contentious deal covering train drivers servicing the Roy Hill Pilbara mine network after finding the employer engaged in "corporate manipulation" by creating a parallel business to bargain with two newly-hired workers for an inferior agreement.
In a novel use of the Corporations Act in an IR setting, logistics company DHL has secured an urgent interlocutory injunction to stop the UWU procuring alleged confidential information from about 60 shop stewards that might have given it a significant advantage in enterprise negotiations underway across the company's sites.
The FWC has thrown out a bid by the AMWU to enter the BHP OS training facility near Mackay to hold discussions with about 150 maintenance trainees, finding the union's coverage rule for fitters and engineering trades doesn't extend to the "caterpillar" trainees until they become maintenance associate "butterflies".
