Technicians at National Cash Registers have won their fight for a collective agreement. When the ASU approached the company on behalf of its members in August 2005, NCR refused to negotiate. But a union-circulated petition revealed that at least 75% of employees wanted a collective agreement, and the company had no option but to join [...]
During an interview on 3AW yesterday, John Howard said that under WorkChoices “some people who have been a disruptive influence in a small firm may not find it as easy to remain”. When pressed, he denied that he was talking about union shop stewards, and said he was talking about “somebody … who is constantly [...]
Now that the WorkChoices package is about to come into force, big business lawyers are already encouraging their clients to take advantage of the legislation to screw their staff. The Government’s unfair dismissal compromise was supposed to protect job security for people working for businesses with over 100 employees. Campbell Fisher, whose firm “usually represents [...]
Seattle emo-pop group Pretty Girls Make Graves recently released their second full-length album, Elan Vital (at least, it’s available in Australia; the rest of the world will have to wait). One track that grabbed Triple J’s attention is “Parade”: We are marchin’ from the shipyards We are marchin’ from the hospital We’ll take it to [...]
With less than a week until WorkChoices is unleashed on the Australian workforce, unions have begun to think about their immediate response. As I see it, there are three broad approaches to take, depending on the industry and the circumstances: defy the law; sidestep the law; or use the law to workers’ advantage. Defy the [...]
With the wage-averaging scam gaining some attention in the media, workplace law experts have already identified another, similar loophole in the WorkChoices package that could be exploited by bad bosses. Salary-sacrificing arrangements allowed by the regulations have no safeguards to prevent their abuse. They could be exploited by trading off, say, $3/hour for goods or [...]
After eight long years, Australia’s strippers have won a significant victory in the federal Industrial Relations Commission: they are now, for the first time, covered by the Striptease Industry Award. The story is unusual enough to have been reported worldwide in tabloid rags, but it is no laughing matter. Strippers work in an industry that [...]
The Financial Review‘s front page this morning carried the headline Employers win right to pay below minimum wage. Contrary to John Howard’s promise that there is nothing new in the WorkChoices regulations, we learn that: Employers will be able to undercut minimum wages under the government’s industrial relations system by entering agreements with employees to [...]
The newly-released WorkChoices regulations are appalllingly drafted. Speaking at an industrial relations conference yesterday, Flinders University’s Andrew Stewart said even the numbering was sloppy and impractical: He noted that the Government had structured the Regulations in a “very peculiar” manner, so that when practitioners cite a section, they will also have to quote the chapter [...]
Labor and the unions say industrial relations was a factor in Labor’s impressive victories in Tasmania and South Australia over the weekend. John Howard, rewriting history, is playing down that suggestion, but his IR minister wasn’t taking any chances. Kevin Andrews waited until the day after the state polls to issue nine simultaneous press releases [...]
