Queensland builders have warned that the adoption of union-backed standard "best practice" pay and conditions for major State Government-funded construction projects will hinder productivity, cause delays and escalate costs.
A court has hit a former Indian High Commissioner with maximum fines for entrapping a worker in "powerless domestic servitude" in the guise of a diplomatic posting, paying her $9 daily to keep his palatial Canberra home 17.5 hours a day, seven days a week.
An accountancy firm and its principal must pay penalties totalling almost $70,000 for failing to comply with FWO notices to produce documents linked to to its client's "grossly inadequate" employee record-keeping.
RAFFWU says it is suing Woolworths on behalf of about 1400 night shift workers allegedly "dragged into meetings" at the height of the pandemic and made to "radically change their work hours from overnight to day or evening work", costing individuals up to $30,000 a year.
A FWC full bench has refused to extend a farm's 16-year-old deal for 12 weeks beyond next month's sunsetting of zombie agreements, describing the application as an effort to pay below-award rates for "one more" onion-picking season.
A former Indian High Commissioner who paid a live-in domestic worker $9 a day to keep his eight-bedroom Canberra home, after he arranged for her "posting" in Australia for the "reception and entertainment of guests", has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 compensation.
In a significant decision on directors' liability for underpayments, a court has found that although the co-founder of Chatime was unaware the bubble-tea chain was in breach of workplace laws, he understood enough about award obligations around casual and weekend penalty rates to be considered complicit.
The RBA will put its bargaining offer directly to employees this month, governor Philip Lowe told an inquiry this morning, after failing to reach agreement with FSU.
The FWO is prosecuting franchisor Bakers Delight for failing to prevent its franchisees from underpaying workers, after the head office discovered the wage theft and failed to address it.
A court has limited to about $100,000 the fines it has imposed on an underpaying, now-shuttered labour hire company after accepting that it unintentionally broke the law and that its embarrassed founder is "appropriately remorseful".
