The SDA has strongly defended its tying of bargained pay rises to the FWC's annual safety net rises, pointing to inflation-beating increases over the past seven years enjoyed by 100,000 Coles workers, as voting opens today on the retailer's proposed four-year deal in the face of a RAFFWU campaign to reject it.
The Senate has passed legislation to raise federally-funded paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026 after crossbench senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock secured $10 million to help small businesses administer the scheme.
The High Court will consider whether employers' duty of care and consequent exposure to damages extends to providing "safe" disciplinary and dismissal processes that protect sacked workers from psychiatric injury.
The FWC has found understaffing weighed heavily on the mind of a custody officer sacked by Ventia for headbutting a door in frustration at a prisoner on the other side, noting it might be "unfair to apply the standards expected of angels to mere humans".
In a significant decision acknowledged as potentially being viewed as "undemocratic", a FWC full bench majority has found it has the power to make a workplace determination on contested bargaining matters after a deal has already been approved by the Commission.
Direct care workers in aged care will receive total work value pay rises of up to 28.5% after a five-member FWC full bench handed down its final ruling today.
An employer has failed to convince the FWC that it should reduce a worker's redundancy payment from 13 weeks to six, finding that although it secured another job for him on the same pay, losing private use of a company car meant the role was not "substantially the same".
The head of the FWC's registered organisations branch has warned Australia's second-biggest union that another decision-maker might not be so accommodating in approving a rule change advanced without conducting a formal vote.
Qantas subsidiary Network Aviation looks likely to win an intractable bargaining declaration, after unions' last-minute decision not to oppose it, ahead of a hearing today.
The FWC has rejected an employer's bid to wind up a general manager's unfair dismissal case after finding that neither of two settlement offers could be regarded as binding.