Labour laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), originally the Australasian Council of Trade Unions, is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions and eight trades and labour councils. The ACTU is a member of the International Trade Union Confederation.
The Australian waterfront dispute of 1998 was an event in Australian industrial relations history, in which the Patrick Corporation undertook a restructuring of their operations for the purpose of dismissing their workforce. The restructuring by Patrick Corporation was later ruled illegal by Australian courts. The dispute involved Patrick Corporation terminating the employment of its workforce and locking out the workers of the workplace after the restructuring had taken place, with many of these workers members of the dominant Maritime Union of Australia. The resulting dismissal and locking out of their unionised workforce was supported and backed by the Australian Liberal/National Coalition Government.
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), known from 1956 to 1973 as the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and from 1973 to 1988 as the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, was a tribunal with powers under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 that existed from 1956 until 2010. It was the central institution of Australian labour law. The AIRC replaced a previous system of industrial courts, which broadly speaking, was engaged in the same functions, but with superior independence and powers.
Australian labour law concerns Commonwealth, state, and common law on rights and duties of workers, unions and employers in Australia. Australian labour law has a dual structure, where some employment issues and relationships are governed by Commonwealth laws, and others are governed by state and territory laws or the common law. It shares a heritage with laws across the Commonwealth of Nations, UK labour law and standards set by the International Labour Organization, the Australian legislature and courts have a built a comprehensive charter of rights at work.
Trade unions in Malaysia are regulated by the Trade Unions Act of 1959.
Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industries. Once established, they are legally binding on employers and employees that are covered by the Enterprise bargaining agreement. An Enterprise Agreement (EA) consists of a collective industrial agreement between either an employer and a trade union acting on behalf of employees or an employer and employees acting for themselves.
The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon Canadian and U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination.
The Australian Workers' Union (AWU) is one of Australia's largest and oldest trade unions. It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the 1880s and currently has approximately 80,000 members. It has exercised an outsized influence on the Australian trade union movement and on the Australian Labor Party throughout its history.
An Australian workplace agreement (AWA) was a type of formalised individual agreement negotiated between an employer and employee in Australia that existed from 1996 to 2009. Employers could offer a "take it or leave it" AWA as a condition of employment. They were registered by the Employment Advocate and did not require a dispute resolution procedure. These agreements operated only at the federal level. AWAs were individual written agreements concerning terms and conditions of employment between an employer and employee in Australia, under the Workplace Relations Act 1996. An AWA could override employment conditions in state or territory laws except those relating to occupational health and safety, workers' compensation, or training arrangements. An AWA was required to meet only the most minimal Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard. Agreements were not required to include effective dispute resolution procedures, and could not include prohibited content. Agreements were for a maximum of five years; approved, promoted and registered by the Workplace Authority; operated to the exclusion of any award; and prohibited industrial action regarding details in the agreement for the life of the agreement. The introduction of AWAs was a very controversial industrial relations issue in Australia.
WorkChoices was the name given to changes made to the federal industrial relations laws in Australia by the Howard Government in 2005, being amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 by the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, sometimes referred to as the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, that came into effect on 27 March 2006.
Clyde Robert Cameron,, was an Australian politician. He was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served in the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1980, representing the Division of Hindmarsh. He was a leading figure in the Australian labour movement and held ministerial office in the Whitlam Government as Minister for Labour (1972–1974), Labor and Immigration (1974–1975), and Science and Consumer Affairs (1975).
Electrolux v The Australian Workers' Union was a 2004 decision by the High Court of Australia that held that a bargaining agent fee did not pertain to the relationship between employer and employee and so could not be included in an enterprise bargaining agreement.
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company that regulates the terms and conditions of employees at work. This includes regulating the wages, benefits, and duties of the employees and the duties and responsibilities of the employer or employers and often includes rules for a dispute resolution process.
The Court of Arbitration was the first court in New South Wales, a state of Australia which dealt exclusively with industrial relation disputes in the early twentieth century. Justice Lance Wright claims that it perhaps was the first court of its type in the world. The court was unique at that time as it was the first court of its type to deal with labour relations between employer and employees on a compulsory basis. Previous arbitration measures between employer and employee had been on a voluntary basis or had been based on the criminal justice system through the use of criminal penalties. The conventional economic model is that both employer and employee enjoy equal bargaining power to set wages and conditions. This asserts that both parties are able to agree on a fair market price for the cost of labour free from distortions. However, where employers or employees group together, these outcomes can be distorted particularly in “boom” or “bust” economic conditions. The purpose of the court was to change the manner in which employers and employees negotiated pay and conditions. It was an attempt to reduce the power imbalances between employer groups or employee unions that arose from using collective bargaining, and the resulting use of that market power to influence wages, and also to reduce the threat of lockout or strikes to achieve those ends.
The Fair Work Commission (FWC), until 2013 known as Fair Work Australia (FWA), is the Australian industrial relations tribunal created by the Fair Work Act 2009 as part of the Rudd Government's reforms to industrial relations in Australia. Operations commenced on 1 July 2009. It is the successor of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, and also performs functions previously performed by the Workplace Authority and the Australian Fair Pay Commission. Since March 2012, Iain JK Ross has been the President of FWC. As of 29 May 2019, it operates under the portfolio of the Australian Attorney-General, the Hon Mark Dreyfus MP. The general manager of the FWC is Murray Furlong, who was appointed in October of 2021.
In labour law, unfair dismissal is an act of employment termination made without good reason or contrary to the country's specific legislation.
South African labour law regulates the relationship between employers, employees and trade unions in the Republic of South Africa.
The Fair Work Act 2009(Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia, passed by the Rudd Government to reform the industrial relations system of Australia. It replaced the Howard Government's WorkChoices legislation, it established Fair Work Australia, later renamed the Fair Work Commission.
