Victoria's Andrews Labor Government will later this week remove its longstanding COVID-19 public health recommendation to work from home if possible, after a big drop in virus-related hospitalisations and a substantial rise in vaccination third-doses.
The FWC has found a law firm's lack of competence and "grossly unprofessional" conduct primarily to blame for the late unfair dismissal claim of a worker who breached a vaccine mandate, but it has refused to grant a one-day extension due to her role in the delay.
The Perrottet Government says it is looking at "some further recognition" of the work performed by NSW nurses and midwives without prompting other public sector wage claims above its 2.5% annual cap.
National Cabinet has today decided against reducing isolation periods for coronavirus-positive workers from seven days to five, while it has also abandoned plans to allow under-18s to drive forklifts, as governments continue to discuss ways to ameliorate worker shortages in the supply chain.
The FWC has "reluctantly" applied the brakes to the NSW Government's COVID-19 vaccination mandate for some rail workers after finding it has an obligation to consider two unions' post-implementation challenges to the policy.
Unions are threatening to walk off jobs that risk the safety of essential workers, after what they claim is the Morrison Government's refusal to cooperate on the workplace response to the Omicron strain of COVID-19 and amid a continuing dire shortage of one of the "basic" frontline tools - Rapid Antigen Tests.
Workers across a range of critical industries will be permitted to attend work despite being close contacts of a COVID-19 case, once they receive a negative rapid antigen test result, following a national cabinet decision today, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The FWC has declined to extend time for an unvaccinated worker who claimed he lodged his claim late because of the theft of 45 one-kilogram silver bars from his home, while it has upheld a nursing home's sacking of a maintenance manager who failed to comply with a State Government inoculation mandate.
A paramedic who claims an Ambulance Victoria IR strategist refused to permit her to take long service leave while she waits for the non-MRNA Novavax has failed to obtain interim orders stopping it from dismissing her while she participates in a group challenge to its vaccine mandate.
Three big unions appear to have pulled out of giving evidence to a Federal parliamentary inquiry that will hear from two unregistered organisations that are signing up workers opposed to workplace vaccination mandates.