The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has granted two months breathing space to burger chain Grill'd before terminating its WorkChoices-era agreement after considering the significant cost to it in switching to award rates. Commissioner Julius Roe made the decision last week in granting an application to terminate the agreement by Grill'd Camberwell emplo...
FWC grants Grill'd a reprieve to negotiate new agreement
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Editorial Team
Editor: David Marin-Guzman, (02) 8587 7682, david.marin-guzman@thomsonreuters.com . ChiefJournalist: Paul Karp. Managing Editor: Peter Schwab. Twitter: @WorkforceTR
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Opposition fears PC review will lead to ‘two-tier' IR system
The Federal Opposition has outlined concerns the Productivity Commission (PC) report into industrial relations will lead to a two-tier system with lower penalty rates in some industries and ‘enterprise contracts' that disadvantage new hires. Shadow employment minister Brendan O'Connor blasted the PC draft workplace relations inquiry report in...
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CFMEU netted $1m+ from entities in possible ‘deception': TURC
The Trade Union Royal Commission (TURC) will investigate more than $1m of payments to the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) from training, charity and income protection entities linked to the union. It will examine whether union enterprise agreements (EAs) garnering money for these entities breached competition law or obtained payme...
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Editorial Team
Editor: David Marin-Guzman, (02) 8587 7682, david.marin-guzman@thomsonreuters.com. Chief Journalist: Paul Karp. Managing Editor: Peter Schwab. Twitter: @WorkforceTR
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FWC Cmr Blair retires, with three more retirements in the works
Commissioner Wayne Blair has retired from the Fair Work Commission (FWC), and will shortly be followed by three more FWC members in coming months. Cmr Blair's retirement follows the early resignation of Deputy President Greg Smith in July, who was due to retire in December. Senior Deputy President Justice Alan Boulton will retire at the end of Augu...
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‘Creative' PC proposes penalty rate cuts and extra flexible contracts
The Productivity Commission has declared Australia's workplace relations system is “not dysfunctional” and “needs repair not replacement” in its interim report released today. However, the PC's report has not shied away from proposing novel and creative changes to the IR system as well as more controversial changes such as c...
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Sydney Opera House restaurant on notice over staff underpayments
Exclusive The Sydney Opera House's iconic Opera Kitchen is being monitored over what is said to be a “pattern of behaviour” after the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) found it had underpaid a visa worker minimum rates and wrongly substituted meals and drinks for penalty rates and loading. The revelation comes as the company that owns the venue...
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Editorial Team
Editor: David Marin-Guzman, (02) 8587 7682, david.marin-guzman@thomsonreuters.com. Chief Journalist: Paul Karp. Managing Editor: Peter Schwab. Twitter: @WorkforceTR
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Top levels of MUA implicated in stop bullying claim at DP World
The stevedores who are seeking stop-bullying orders against DP World and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) took their complaints to the leaders of the union's national and Vic branches but they failed to stop their victimisation, statements lodged with the Fair Work Commission claim. The statements alleged the bullying including co-workers call...
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PC's enterprise contracts may result in ‘take it or leave it' offers
Leading employment academics have raised concerns the ‘enterprise contracts' proposed by the Productivity Commission (PC) in its draft workplace relations inquiry report may result in ‘take it or leave it' job offers imposed on new employees and could water down existing enterprise agreement (EA) conditions. The draft report released ye...
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PC report a rebuff to deregulation radicals: academics
The Productivity Commission (PC) draft workplace relations inquiry report has broadly supported the current IR system and rebuffed advocates of labour market deregulation, according to employment law experts. However, concerns have been raised its proposals may threaten Fair Work Commission (FWC) independence. The August 4 draft report found Austra...
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Weekend work motivated by extra pay: employer studies
Employer-commissioned studies to justify penalty rate cuts have revealed a large proportion of workers who choose to work on weekends do so for extra pay, undercutting industry claims that lifestyle choices and not penalty rates motivate weekend work. However, the studies also show that employees' willingness to work is relatively inelastic as pena...
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FWC bans contact with victims in bullying order first
In the first time it has issued stop-bullying orders which were not first determined by consent, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has ordered a property manager not to contact two former co-workers at a related real estate business for two years. Commissioner Peter Hampton made the orders at a determinative conference on July 30, after the employer c...
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FWO cracks down on local govt procurement of security contracts
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) is preparing to randomly audit metropolitan and regional councils over their tenders for security services to ensure they do not enable underpayments by subcontractors. FWO Natalie James said “councils need to consider whether their procurement processes and subsequent governance of those arrangements create an e...
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Don't throw ‘Work Choices' at us for every reform attempt: employers
Employer groups have lambasted union reactions to the Productivity Commission's draft workplace relations report and have said the debate over necessary changes is only just beginning. Aust Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Kate Carnell backed the PC's ‘enterprise contract' (ECs) proposal, saying union claims it was “a return to Work...
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Freedoms inquiry downplays major changes to workplace relations laws
Attorney-General George Brandis' “traditional freedoms” inquiry appears to have shied away from major changes to workplace relations legislation, an interim report released this week has revealed. Brandis had tasked the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) with inquiring into Commonwealth legislative encroachments on ‘tradition...
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Employer's Facebook evidence ‘fell flat on its face'
In a continuation of a “bizarre” case where an employer persuaded an employee to “fake” his own dismissal so as to get rid of a co-worker - but then dismissed him as well, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has labelled the employer's latest evidence as either “suspect, incorrect, incomplete or irrelevant”. “It...
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Editorial Team
Editor: David Marin-Guzman, (02) 8587 7682, david.marin-guzman@thomsonreuters.com . Chief Journalist: Paul Karp. Managing Editor: Peter Schwab. Twitter: @WorkforceTR
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‘Dubious' business model blocks security guard's dismissal claim
In what the Fair Work Commission has slammed as “dubious” and “borderline farcical”, a prominent South Australian security company's complex employment arrangements have nixed a sacked workers' unfair dismissal claim against it. Despite concluding security guard Alan Edge's confusion over his employer was “perfectly un...
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