November 2014

On November 13, 2014, the President issued a Decree with the Rank, Value and Force of Partial Amendment of the Nutrition Law for the Workers (“Nutrition Law”).

The most innovative aspects of the amendment of the Nutrition Law, are the following:

  • Value of the nutrition benefit

The Nutrition Law increased the basis for the calculation

The Ontario Employment Standards Amendments Act (Leaves to Help Families) came into force on October 29, 2014, creating three new unpaid family-related leaves for employees: (1) Family Caregiver Leave; (2) Critically Ill Child Care Leave; and (3) Crime-Related Child Death or Disappearance Leave. This post will highlight the salient features of these new provisions affecting

More than five years after the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (the Act) commenced operation, uncertainty still attaches to the meaning of “workplace right”, which is a critical concept in the operation of the Act’s “general protections”.

General protections

The Act makes it unlawful for an employer to take “adverse action” against an employee

With ever increasing economic pressures employers are frequently required to consider ways to reduce employment and labour costs. While there are many ways to lawfully achieve this, requiring an employee to become an independent contractor performing the same work, certainly isn’t one of them.

The recent case of The Director of the Fair Work Building

The Australia Institute (TAI), an independent public policy think tank, has published a report entitled Walking the tightrope which considers the question: Have Australians achieved work/life balance?  TAI’s research reveals the answer to this question is a definitive ‘no’.  Australian employees work approximately 58.8 million hours of unpaid overtime per year, equating to

As all those with an interest in safety management know, it is far easier to eliminate hazards and risks in the design stage than later down the track. Sadly, however, it appears that design deficiencies are still contributing to work-related fatalities in Australia in significant numbers. Australia’s Safe Work Australia has recently released the Safe

The Fair Work Commission (Commission) has handed down a decision (Australian Municipal, Administrative, Clerical and Services Union v North East Water [2014] FWC 6922) which highlights the extent to which ‘no extra claims’ clauses contained in enterprise agreements can limit an employer’s ability to unilaterally vary employment benefits, even where such benefits

A potential change is on the horizon for United States pregnancy discrimination law. In the past decade, pregnancy discrimination charges have increased by 35 percent. See Pregnancy Discrimination Charges, US Equal Opportunity Comm’n.

Recently, the EEOC’s General Counsel stated that pregnancy discrimination was one the “areas” in which employers “need[ed] to remind themselves of