News: Fashion retail staff, who buys your clothes?

Retail staff: the expensive job

Have often wondered this: who pays for the clothes retail staff are expected to wear when working for fashion brands and high-end labels? Well, the employers pay for some of it but the discounts are usually around the 40 per cent mark and don’t cover all the costs. But under the Fair Work Act, if an employer requires any special clothing to do a job they need to cover the cost unless otherwise stated in an enterprise agreement.The full costs, that is. News.com.au reported: Workplace lawyer Luke Gattuso, special counsel at Allens Arthur Robinson, said asking staff to spend their wages to buy clothes would contravene the Act if it was an “unreasonable requirement”. Mr Gattuso said an employer must not exert undue influence or pressure on an employee if they chose not to receive a deduction from their pay to buy items like clothing and footwear. “It’s a bit of a blurry line from the employee’s perspective if their employer is saying ‘I’d rather you wear this than that’. A policy doesn’t really mean much if the practice is in fact something else”

Making better choices, a little bit easier

A new website will soon make it easy for people to key in their postcode and find out what food in their immediate area is fresh, sustainable and ethically produced. It might make having a conscience a little less effort. Local harvest’s creator Nick Ray said: ”It’s a tool for people to make better choices. And the reality is the industrial food systems behind the supermarkets have a lack of transparency.” Australia’s Local Harvest adds retailers, farmers’ markets, market gardens and numerous groups and organisations associated with sustainable and ethical food harvesting, gleaning, marketing, production, retail, cooking and publishing into the mix. Ray says it’s all about connecting people – and watching the site evolve from there. ”So where you live will be the first point of engagement for Local Harvest but there will be many after that.”

What exactly is happening with poker machine reform?

There’s a lot of doubt in the air, but no one is saying anything much. Ever since Labor bolstered its position in Government with a new speaker and a new vote on its side of things (and the Coalition essentially losing a vote) there has been talks that the poker machine reforms pushed by Independent Andrew Wilkie would fail because the Government no longer needed his vote. Not strictly speaking, anyway. The Prime Minister held talks with Wilkie over the weekend and has publicly refused to back the mandatory pre-commitment reforms which were previously on the table. They would require problem gamblers to set a limit of money they were willing to lose before playing the machines, along with ATM withdrawal limits in venues. It is understood many backbench Labor MPs have met with the Australian Hotels Association in order to find an alternative ‘reform’ proposal that they can both work with and take to the PM. It’s likely any alternative also wouldn’t include $1 maximum bet limits, another proposal favoured by Wilkie but disliked by clubs. And so we wait, to see.

The Golden Globes wrap-up, winners

Meryl Streep and George Clooney surprised almost no-one by taking home the top actor gongs in their respective Best Actor – Drama categories. Streep won for her performance as Margaret Thatcher and Clooney for his role in The Descendants which also won Best Picture – Drama. Jean Dujardin took out the best actor gong in a musical or comedy for his role in The Artist and Michelle Williams the equivalent for My Week With Marilyn. Martin Scorsese won Best Director for Hugo. Christopher Plummer, 82, was named Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Beginners, while Octavia Spencer, 42, won Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Help.

Madonna won Best Original Song for Masterpiece from W.E., which she also directed, and The Adventures of Tintin was named Best Animated Feature Film. Best Film Screenplay was awarded to Woody Allen for Midnight In Paris and Best Foreign Language Film was awarded to Iran’s A Separation.

If you missed the after-party pics, there’s a whole gallery here. Or our full coverage is here.

Australians set organ donation record

But it’s still not nearly enough. In 2011, some 307 Australians donated their organs to 1001 others in need of a transplant. The number of donors was 28 more than for 2010, which translated into an additional 70 recipients. Victoria led the way with 107 organ donors, followed by NSW (77) and Queensland (67). The organ donation system in Australia is opt in and 1700 people are on the organ transplant national register at any one time.

Jenny Craig pulls its Kyle and Jacki O sponsorship

Just a day after it announced, weight loss company ‘Jenny’ has pulled its sponsorship of the show whose host once told a Jenny endorser – Magda Szubanski – to lose weight in a concentration camp. The company said: “One thing about Jenny Craig is that we listen. We badly misjudged public perception of Kyle Sandilands. We have instructed 2DAY FM that our advertising is to be discontinued on the Kyle & Jackie O show, and the rest of their schedule immediately.” Yesterday Jenny tried to defend the major sponsorship of the show – replacing Holden – by saying they do not ‘sit in judgement over controversial matters and we accept it when people apologise for their actions’.

The Facebook app that messages from beyond the grave

So this is, at the least, interesting. Facebook is hosting an app called ‘If I die’ which lets users send out a final update after they have died. Three friends need to be selected as ‘trustees’ to confirm the fact you have died and, that being done, a pre-recorded video message or text update will be sent out. Essentially it’s your final message, web 2.0 style. But would you use it? More than 5000 people have liked the app. What would your ‘last’ message be?

What else is on your mind, in the news?