A new report says that wage theft in Australian freight shipping is costing seafarers about $65 million a year and necessitates changes to the Fair Work Act and greater powers and cooperation for regulators.
The FWC's new leading indicator of bargained wage rises - officially launched today - shows that deals lodged in the first half of last month paid an average increase of 3%, up on those in the most recent DEWR data.
A law firm found to have breached the Legal Profession Act when estimating costs says it will challenge a 25% deduction to the sum it claims after settling one of several no win, no fee retail workers' class actions, arguing also that proposed exemptions for litigation funding schemes are unlikely to improve the plight of those who are underpaid.
The ACTU has urged One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts to abandon his private member's bill that seeks to have labour hire workers under certain awards paid the same as those directly-employed and to instead try to achieve his aims through the "same job, same pay" provisions in Labor's promised legislative amendments.
As talks continue on the scope and form of a soon-to-be expanded multi-employer bargaining framework, Labor Senator Tony Sheldon says Qantas' IR arrangements are a "textbook case" for it and claims the airline's "game book" is also playing out in the mining sector.
In a shift in emphasis after calling for limits on pay rises to avoid a wage-price spiral, RBA Governor Philip Lowe today called for businesses to avoid using skyrocketing inflation "as cover" for increasing their profit margins.
MEAA members have accepted a new enterprise agreement covering journalists at Nine's publishing operations, which delivers pay rises of 7.5% over two years and ends unpaid internships as part of a broader push to improve newsroom diversity.
Teleworking, retraining and enhanced collective bargaining could lift pay growth that has been constrained by Australia's relatively "monopsonistic" labour market that gives a few dominant employers the upper hand in wage-setting, according to the OECD.
The FWC has agreed to terminate a transnational CSL subsidiary's agreement, clearing the way for it to move senior employees onto a "global remuneration model", after accepting that it "meaningfully" consulted its workforce about the implications.