Business is gearing up for a post-election push to reshape Australia's industrial relations landscape if the Coalition wins office: weakening unfair dismissal protections, cutting penalty rates and trading off conditions under the guise of 'flexibility', the ACTU said. Tony Abbott has today admitted there would be "all sorts of changes"…

Australia can only achieve prosperity, competitiveness and fairness in the 21st century with stronger climate policies that improve carbon and energy productivity, said an alliance of social, union, environment and research organisations today, releasing a policy platform Productivity, Fairness and Sustainable Climate Action. The Southern Cross Climate Coalition, which comprises…

Tony Abbott must rule out changes to penalty rates following revelations his IR spokesman, Eric Abetz, has been secretly meeting with big business groups running a campaign to strip penalty rates from hundreds of thousands of workers. ACTU National Secretary Dave Oliver said Tony Abbott needed to guarantee a future…

Tony Abbott's plans for small business will only be fully unveiled after the election when the Coalition reviews the Fair Work Act to pave the way for cuts to penalty rates, overtime and unfair dismissal protections, the ACTU said today. The policy on red tape and competition laws announced today…

BLIND workers employed by the charitable Vision Australia say they have become the latest victims of a corporate culture that puts profits before people. Originally published 15 August on the Working Life website here Seventy-three blind and vision-impaired employees of Vision Australia Enterprises warehouses in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will…

Australian workers are worried about paying their bills and keeping their jobs as they head into the federal election, the biggest ever survey of union members has found. The ACTU has undertaken a record 102,000 telephone surveys of workers across a range of industries including nurses, construction workers, public servants,…

ACTU calls for greater emphasis on addressing what matters to women and families as analysis of the two major parties shows women and families fare better under Labor and the Coalition's one policy would only minimally address the major issues. The analysis compared policies around paid parental leave, time to…

Your ASU Qantas Holidays National Negotiating Team met with the company representatives in Melbourne on 8 August 2013. On top of our list was discussing the feedback we had from the membership meetings that had already been held. What did we discuss? We have told the company that members will…

Our third meeting about a new Ground Staff agreement post the agreement vote down in May 2013 was held on 29th July 2013. Both Virgin management and representatives of the Pit Crew union, the TWU were in attendance. Apart from the annual leave loading news, which we reported separately in…

The ASU is concerned to have read in this week’s media reports that Abbott is planning to fund his controversial paid parental leave scheme by excluding public sector workers, including local government employees, from it. In effect, council workers, teachers and nurses, amongst many others, would lose out in order…