Up until a week ago, General Motor’s vehicle assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario was earmarked for closure in 1919. However, a four-year wage deal ratified by members of the trade union Unifor has now secured $544 ($US 412 M) investment in the company’s Canadian operations, an investment centered on the Oshawa plant. The deal will be worth an increase of just 2% on wage rates this Autumn and another 2% in September 2019. However, workers will also receive a bonus worth $12,000 ($US 9,088), half of which will be paid immediately as a signing bonus and the remainder over the next three years.

The United States Court of Appeal for the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that employers may ban employees from wearing the dreadlocks hairstyle. The lawsuit had been backed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because it related to a policy that appeared to be racially biased. However, the court held that hairstyle is a mutable physical trait that can be changed, unlike many other immutable physical characteristics such as skin colour.Therefore, a general hairstyle policy, that applied equally to all employees in a company, did not give rise to discrimination if it happened to exclude hairstyles favoured by certain ethnic groups.

Up until now, in the state of South Australia, the absence of any reference to notice in an employment contract has led the courts to calculate an implied term of ‘reasonable notice’. This practice has, however, been rendered inappropriate (subject to a current appeal) due to the District Court case Kuczmarski v Ascot Administration. Now there is no need to imply any notice period, other than the minimum set out by the Fair Work Act 2009.