labour hire

The Transport Workers Union wants Qantas chair and the whole board sacked for its anti-worker decisions, after the High Court unanimously upheld two Federal Court rulings. Jim McIlroy reports.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the Security of Tenure Bill on July 26, which seeks to regulate the practice of job contracting (labour hire) in the country, writes Merck Maguddayao.

Centrelink, the federal government's main social welfare agency, is planning to hire 1000 private labour-hire staff to carry out "debt recovery" operations and assist in enforcing compliance by welfare recipients.

This latest large-scale outsourcing exercise comes just a month after the Coalition government announced that controversial multinational corporation Serco would use 250 employees to staff a Centrelink call centre, supposedly to help reduce long waiting times.

August 13 was Day 4 of an indefinite strike and picket by workers at Woolworths’ Melbourne Liquor Distribution Centre (MLDC). The strike began at 4am on August 9 when workers walked off the job in protest at Woolworths’ plans that all new employees would be labour hire casuals. During the last enterprise bargaining negotiations, Woolworths had agreed not to introduce labour hire. Currently, all employees, including casuals, are directly employed by Woolworths with opportunities for casual workers to apply to become permanent each year.