Senator George Brandis has today announced that the Heydon inquiry will be given until the end of 2015 to produce its report, after the royal commissioner told the attorney-general that some union officials appeared to regard their organisations as immune from "any social or community standard shared by other Australians".
A building company and its director who dismissed a construction worker so that they could re-employ her as an independent contractor now face civil penalties and a possible compensation order.
A corrections officer who failed to properly engage with her employer's attempts to assess her fitness to return to work was not unfairly dismissed, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.
Supermarket giant Coles will conduct random wage audits of its trolley collection contractors, back pay 10 employees more than $220,000 and establish a $500,000 fund for any future underpayment claims, as part of an agreement with the Fair Work Ombudsman that acknowledges the company's "ethical and moral responsibility" to look after workers on its sites.
The ACTU will push for the Fair Work Commission's four-year modern award review to create a common clause giving more than two million casual workers the right to become permanent employees.
The mere fact that bargaining is "difficult" is unlikely to justify granting a low-paid authorisation for a multi-employer agreement, a failed application by United Voice in the security industry demonstrates.
The NUW has demonstrated majority support for it to bargain for an enterprise agreement to cover warehouse employees at one of Cotton On's two Australian distribution centres – despite the company arguing that a single agreement should cover the workers at both sites.
A hotel chef breached his contractual duty of fidelity and fiduciary duties by sourcing chicken schnitzels through his wife's business and selling them to his employer for $1 more than their original purchase price, a court has found.
