My Blog

Author: Fiona Macdonald

  • Australia dumps its care crisis on the Pacific

    A report by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute and Public Services International has also found that when workers get to Australia, many are being deskilled, underpaid and exploited.

    Care workers have been added to the Pacific Australia Labor Mobility (PALM) scheme, traditionally aimed at seasonal agriculture workers like fruit pickers. This has led to skilled health workers – like nurses – quitting their jobs to take up better paid but lower skilled jobs in Australia.

    The report details the harrowing state of the health systems in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Many health services and hospitals have been decimated, operating at 30-40 percent capacity or below.

    The research reveals that not only are Pacific workers doing lower-skilled care jobs in Australia, they are vulnerable to poor treatment, due to their visa status.

    “Workers have the right to cross borders for a better life for themselves and their families,” said Fiona Macdonald, Director of the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute.

    “But the current system is broken. It is rich countries taking from poor countries and giving nothing back. Australia and New Zealand are offloading their own care crises to their Pacific neighbours.

    “Australia has vowed to invest in the health systems of its Pacific neighbours, not destroy them. It should be helping to build better, safer health facilities and train workers, not lure them away.

    “We are taking workers out of a system already at breaking point, giving them jobs which are below their skill level and failing to protect them from exploitation and mistreatment.

    “The recruiting and labour hire systems, including international schemes like PALM, need urgent reform. This should start with meaningful dialogue with the workers themselves.”

    The post Australia dumps its care crisis on the Pacific – new report appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Go Home On Time Day 2025

    The research has been released today to mark Go Home On Time Day 2025, an initiative by the Centre for Future Work, now into its 17th year.

    It is the first full year since Right To Disconnect Laws were introduced in Australia, back in August 2024.

    As full time employees and their bosses come to grips with workers’ right to switch off, the burden is shifting to part time and casual employees.

    Overall, Australians are still doing more than three and a half hours of unpaid overtime each week – the equivalent to four and a half full-time weeks per year.

    The average workers is losing nearly $8000 a year, which is ripping a staggering $95.8 billion a year out of the pockets of Australian workers.

    Key points:

    • Full-time employees average 3.8 hours of unpaid overtime a week. For every ten hours of paid work, they’re working one for nothing.
    • Despite doing significantly fewer hours overall, part-time employees do 3.7 hours of unpaid overtime a week. For every seven hours of paid work, they’re doing nearly an hour for nothing.
    • Younger people (18-24) do the most unpaid overtime at 4.7 hours a week, equivalent to almost one hour of unpaid work for every five paid hours.
    • Unpaid overtime equates to almost 173 hours per year, per worker, more than 4.5 full-time weeks.
    • If that unpaid overtime was valued at median wage rates, the average worker is losing $7,930 a year or $305 a fortnight.
      • Economy-wide, that equates to almost $95.8 billion of lost income a year, which is more than the government spends on the NDIS and Aged Care combined.

    “Australians have been giving their bosses so many free hours for so many years, we were never going to see the level of unpaid overtime suddenly plummet,” said Fiona Macdonald, Director of the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute.

    “The situation for full time workers has stabilised. It’s a good first step. I would say, for them, the right to disconnect is working.

    “But this is the first time we have seen rates of unpaid overtime for part time workers almost as high as full time workers.

    “The right to disconnect is less effective for part time workers and casuals because they are simply not given enough paid hours to do their jobs.

    “Young people who are already on the lowest incomes are bearing the brunt of this trend towards squeezing part timers.

    “However you look at it, Australian workers are being ripped off. The cost of living crisis isn’t over. Now, more than ever, workers should be paid for every single hour they work. ”

    The post Go Home On Time Day 2025. As full timers disconnect, part timers are doing more unpaid overtime appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Too much work and too few paid hours — survey results

    Widespread dissatisfaction with paid work hours, and employees working excessive unpaid overtime, are two of the key findings of the 2025 Go Home on Time Day (GHOTD) survey. The annual survey, undertaken by the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute in early September, asked 1,001 Australian workers about their paid working hours and preferences and about any unpaid overtime they worked.

    The findings of the 2025 survey, marking the seventeenth Go Home on Time Day, are not dissimilar to the 2024 survey findings. A large minority of Australian workers would prefer either more or fewer paid work hours. Mostly, workers who are dissatisfied with their hours want more paid work hours (44% of all workers), while a smaller group (14%) want less paid work time. Alongside the desire for more work many employees are working several hours of unpaid overtime each week. This is the case for employees of all ages and for men and women across most industries and occupations. The 2025 GHOTD survey found, on average, employees work unpaid overtime of 3.6 hours a week, equivalent to 173 hours, or over 4.5 weeks, a year. Paid at the median wage rate this amounts to a financial cost to each worker of $7,930 per year; in total a loss of $95.78 billion.

    A positive finding from the 2025 survey is that unpaid overtime among full-time employees appears to be continuing a slow decline, noted in 2024. This suggests the “Right to Disconnect” legislation, introduced for employees in large organisations in August 2024, may be having its intended impact. The legislation was only extended to small businesses in August 2025, so we might expect to see further declines in unpaid overtime in 2026. A less positive finding is that unpaid overtime is high among part-time and casual employees, many of whom are younger workers. The costs of unpaid overtime to these workers are substantial–especially when considered as a proportion of their paid work time, given their shorter paid work hours and often lower pay rates.

    Read the full report

    The post Too much work and too few paid hours? appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Taking up the Right to Disconnect? (GHOTD 2024)

    This year marks the sixteenth annual Go Home on Time Day (GHOTD), an initiative of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, that shines a spotlight on the maldistribution of working hours and the scale of unpaid overtime worked by Australians.

    The Australian labour market has remained relatively strong over 2024 although interest rate rises have pushed unemployment to over four per cent. Recent growth in wages has not been enough to take pressure off household budgets, or to offset the major reductions in real wages that occurred following the COVID pandemic. Across the economy, large numbers of workers want more paid work hours. However, the underemployment problem co-exists with overwork and with unpaid overtime that contributes to the loss of substantial amounts of income for working households.

    During the past two years there has been a great deal of public attention and debate about a right to disconnect from work outside work hours. New “Right to Disconnect” laws came into effect in August 2024. While it is early days, these laws could already be having a positive impact including through raised awareness that workers should be free to enjoy their personal time without work demands. Our research indicates that unpaid overtime hours were fewer in 2024 than in previous years, both pre- and post-COVID pandemic years.

    Unpaid overtime
    On average, employees reported they performed 3.6 hours of unpaid work in the week of the survey, equivalent to 10.9% of total working hours. This unpaid overtime equates to 188 hours per year per worker, or almost five standard 38-hour work weeks.

    • If unpaid overtime were valued at median wage rates, this means the average worker is losing $7,713 per year or $297 a fortnight.
    • At the economy-wide level, this equates to more than $91 billion of lost income per year.

    The personal and social costs of unpaid overtime, through working outside of normal hours, include negative consequences for health and wellbeing and relationships:

    • Four in ten workers report physical tiredness (42%) and feeling mentally drained (40%)A third of workers experience stress or anxiety (32%), and one in four experienced interference with personal life/relationships (29%).One in five workers experience disrupted sleep (22%).
      • One in three workers (36%) indicate that unpaid overtime is either expected or encouraged in their workplace.
    • The most common reason for working outside scheduled work hours is too much work (41%), with the second most common reason being staff shortages when other staff are absent or on leave (31%).

    Dissatisfaction with working hours
    Across the whole labour market, almost half of all employed workers (45%) are unsatisfied with their working hours – wanting either more or fewer hours.
    o One in three workers (32%) reported that they wanted more paid hours. This desire was especially strong among workers in casual jobs (51%). Over four in ten workers (43%) aged 18 to 30 years of age wanted more paid hours.
    o Just over half of workers (55%) indicated their hours were about right.

    To calculate how much pay you are losing through unpaid overtime go to our unpaid overtime calculator at gohomeontimeday.org.au

    The post Taking up the Right to Disconnect? Unsatisfactory Working Hours and Unpaid Overtime appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Right to Disconnect: early results

    Early evidence on how the Right to Disconnect laws are working in practice.

  • Fixing the work and care crisis means tackling insecure and unpredictable work

    The Fair Work Commission is examining how to reduce insecurity and unpredictability in part-time and casual work to help employees better balance work and care.

    The Commission is reviewing modern awards that set out terms and conditions of employment for many working Australians to consider how workplace relations settings in awards impact on work and care. This follows a 2023 finding by the Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Work and Care last year that there is a “work and care crisis”.

    The Select Committee’s final report noted “too many Australians are working in conditions that lack predictable hours and thus pay”, making it difficult to manage their care responsibilities with paid work.

    Insufficient income to meet family needs, inability to plan, inability to access suitable care, high stress levels and lack of time for life are some of the negative impacts of insecure and unpredictable part-time and casual work for workers with caring responsibilities.

    Women are overrepresented in part-time and casual jobs, as they continue to provide most unpaid care for children, elderly parents, and sick or disabled family members. Among women, casual employment is most common among 15 to 34 year-olds, while for men it is highest among those aged 65 years and older. Women’s casual employment is linked to child-rearing.

    Pay rates in casual jobs are often lower than for employees in equivalent permanent part-time and full-time jobs, despite casual loadings. Underemployment is also high and unpredictable working hours are common among casual and part-time employees, including in services sectors such as retail and care. In both sectors, insecure casual jobs provide workers with very little control over their work hours. Lack of control over hours is often a feature of permanent part-time jobs as well as casual jobs

    In a job with unpredictable hours it can be extremely difficult to organise and manage the costs of care. For example, for parents, uncertainty of working hours and income can make access to reliable and affordable childcare impossible. Unpredictable short-hours rosters can make it barely worth working at all as income may not cover the costs of formal childcare.

    Good quality, secure part-time jobs have long been regarded as essential for greater gender equality in employment, including as part-time jobs can support better sharing of care among men and women. However, the expansion of part-time work in the Australian economy since the 1980s has been an expansion of casual and part-time jobs that are highly insecure, often low-paid and with poorer conditions, protections and entitlements than most full-time jobs.

    It is possible to make casual and part-time jobs more secure and predictable. The Fair Work Commission’s analysis of industrial awards shows that there are many provisions in awards applying to part-time and casual employment that contribute to insecurity and lack of predictability. Award provisions include, for example, short minimum payments periods, broken shifts, poor guarantees around minimum and regular hours of work, little or no payment for travel time between different work locations, little or no notice of roster changes and poor compensation for being on-call.

    Secure work and a living wage are fundamental to good work and care arrangements. Secure work doesn’t just mean ongoing work or protection from unfair dismissal. Secure work entails adequate and predictable work hours, reasonable flexibility of working time, compensation for unsocial hours, safety at work and access to union representation.

    Worker-carers should also have rights to carer’s leave and personal leave, regardless of their employment arrangements. Systems of portable leave entitlements could help all workers manage care and work at all stages of their working lives. These and other leave entitlements would have the benefit of supporting a better sharing of care.

    The Fair Work Commission’s will complete its review in the middle of 2024. It is to be hoped that this leads to improved working conditions for worker carers, enabling men and women to care and work without paying the price through job insecurity.

    The post Fixing the work and care crisis means tackling insecure and unpredictable work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians

    The Commission today announced rises between 2 and 13.5 per cent for aged care workers from July 2024.

    “Today’s decision is crucial to supporting safe and quality care for elderly Australians, and the sustainability of the aged care workforce,” said Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “For too long, aged care work has been undervalued and low paid. The Fair Work Commission’s decision to award additional pay rises, on top of an interim 15 per cent wage rise, is vital to fixing this.

    “The introduction of a new classification structure will also provide the basis for the ongoing recognition and valuation of aged care work.

    “It’s essential the federal government commits to fully funding the additional increases of up to 13.5 per cent from the start of the next financial year.”

    “The exclusion of indirect care workers from today’s decision is a lost opportunity to support the lowest paid workers.”

    The post Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Most Coalition voters back right to disconnect

    It comes as the federal opposition pushes amendments to the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2024 – subject to a Senate inquiry due to be handed down today – to scrap the right. The Coalition has vowed to overturn the legislation if it wins government.

    Key findings:

    The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work surveyed 1,017 Australians about the right to disconnect in late January, before the bill passed parliament.

    • Three-quarters (76%) supported the federal government legislating a right to disconnect, while 11% were opposed.
    • Support for legislating a right to disconnect was high across the political spectrum.
    • Greens (90%) and Labor voters (83%) were the most supportive. This was followed by two-thirds of Coalition voters (66%). Just 18% of Coalition voters opposed it.
    • Three in four ‘independent/other’ voters (77%) and 61% of One Nation voters supported legislating a right to disconnect.

    “The opposition appears determined to remain out of touch with its own voters by pledging to roll back the very policies they support,” said Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director, Industrial and Social at the Centre for Future Work.

    “The Coalition joined the business lobby in claiming the right to disconnect would cause the sky to fall in. They were wrong. Instead, this survey finds most Australians across the political spectrum back the legislation to stop work encroaching into their personal and family time.

    “We know that unpaid overtime is endemic. Our research shows employers are stealing more than 280 hours a year from their workers. This average employee loses $11,055 a year to unpaid overtime.

    “The implementation of the right to disconnect is a commonsense step towards rectifying this exploitative imbalance.”

    The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is due to report on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2024 today.

    The post Most Coalition voters back right to disconnect appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • More loopholes to close on insecure work and a new right to disconnect from work

    This means Australia’s employment laws will be further amended to tackle the problems of insecurity and low pay, with the changes targeting casual employment and gig platform work arrangements. The package also includes a new right for employees to disconnect from work outside their paid work time.

    A new definition of casual employment will be included in the Fair Work Act, making it harder for employers to classify their employees as casual when, in reality, the employees are required to work regular hours for a continuing and indefinite period. The legislation also establishes a new pathway for casual employees to seek permanent status.

    The casual employment changes should go some way to stopping and reversing the growth of so-called ‘permanent casual’ arrangements, which have become widespread. Workers in these arrangements are actually in permanent jobs while they are given casual employment status.

    Casual employment means lower pay, little or no job security and no right to paid leave. Lack of employment security in casual employment creates all sorts of other insecurities for workers, such as limiting access to finance, secure housing and childcare. According to government estimates, there are over 850,000 casual employees who could be eligible to seek permanency under the legislation.

    Gig worker or ‘employee-like’ reforms in the Closing Loopholes package aim to address low pay and poor working conditions experienced by workers on digital platforms who are engaged as independent contractors, are low-paid and/or have very limited bargaining power, such as delivery riders and rideshare drivers. The Fair Work Commission will now be able to make orders for minimum standards for these digital platform workers.

    This ‘employee-like’ reforms extend the scope of Australia’s Fair Work Act to provide protections and rights to vulnerable workers, who are not employees. This should prove to be an effective response to the challenges facing vulnerable ‘gig workers as argued by the Centre for Future Work’s David Peetz has argued in a recent Centre for Future Work report on self-employment.

    Closing Loopholes also includes a ‘right to disconnect’ from work, an initiative of the Greens, included to get the minor party’s support for the bill. In future, employees will have a right to refuse to respond to contact from their employers outside their scheduled hours if the contact is unreasonable.

    Go Home on Time Day research conducted in 2022 by the Centre for Future Work found that 8 out of every 10 workers supported a right to disconnect. This level of support is not surprising, given the amount of unpaid overtime workers are doing. In 2023, the Centre for Future Work reported employees are, on average, working 5.8 hours a week — total of 280 hours, or 7 weeks, a year of unpaid overtime per employee.

    The new right to disconnect is a practical solution for many employees that should also assist to shift cultures in workplaces where reliance on unpaid overtime has become the norm.

    Some employer groups are arguing the Closing Loopholes legislation ‘goes too far’. To the contrary, if there is a weakness in the legislation, it is that it does not always account for power imbalances in the relationship between employees and employers. And this may limit the effectiveness of the some of the new provisions.

    As a result of amendments put forward by independent David Pocock and the two Jacqui Lambie Network senators in response to employers’ concerns, a number of the bill’s provisions will be weaker in the final legislation than they were in the government’s original bill.

    The amended bill passed by the Senate yesterday provides greater scope for employers to refuse casual employees’ requests for permanent status. The proposed prohibition on employers unreasonably contacting employees out of work hours has been removed. In the amended bill the prohibition is now on employers punishing employees who refuse to monitor and respond to unreasonable contact.

    The Closing Loopholes part 2 reforms are welcome changes that will limit some of the damage and disadvantage caused by insecure work and the encroachment of (unpaid) work into life outside work.

    The post More loopholes to close on insecure work … and a new right to disconnect from work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • We Cannot Truly Value Care Until Workers Using Digital Labour Platforms Get Fair Pay and Conditions

    Australia risks returning to the days when the value of a female care worker’s effort and their working conditions were largely determined in private, informal relationships out of sight and out of the scope of regulation that protects most other workers.

    For most of the 20th Century, women workers providing care and assistance to people in private residences were explicitly excluded from the industrial relations system that ensured rights and standards, including minimum wages and employment conditions, for 90 per cent of Australian workers.

    Homecare and other social and community services workers were only recognised as workers at the end of the century, after long and enormously difficult struggles by women and their unions.

    Finally, in the 1990s, for the first time, care and support workers gained regulated minimum standards of pay and conditions. Previously, as unregulated workers, they had extremely low pay rates and some of the worst working conditions in Australia.

    Fast forward thirty years to 2024. The care and support workforce is still highly feminised. It is large and it is growing 3 times faster than other sectors in the Australian economy. Most care and support jobs are still relatively low-paid and insecure.

    Today, however, the need for fair pay, better quality jobs, and career paths for care and support workers has the attention of government and other policy makers. In the wake of the pandemic there is greater appreciation of how the quality of these jobs impacts on the quality of care and support for the aged and people with disability.

    And it is very clear that, if we are to successfully tackle Australia’s gender pay gap and women’s economic inequality, we must ensure better pay and career pathways for care and support workers.

    But now, digital or ‘gig’ labour platforms are undermining the slow progress that has been made towards proper recognition and valuing of care work. This is because most platforms, through which aged care and disability support workers connect with people requiring care and support, insist that workers are independent contractors.

    Platforms compete in the NDIS and aged care markets by using independent contractors to provide cheaper services, while other service providers directly employ workers. Platforms profit from avoiding the costs of employment, including superannuation, training and supervision. Platform workers have no minimum employment standards.

    Digital platform care and support workers have a lot in common with previous care and domestic workers who, for most of the 20th Century, were invisible and isolated, and struggled to have their labour recognised as work.

    Platform workers are without any rights to minimum rates of pay, working time standards, superannuation or other benefits and protections they would have as employees. They mostly perform their labour without peer support, organisational supervision and training, and they are cut off from opportunities for development and promotion.

    Opponents of employment standards for platform care and support workers don’t see it like this. They argue standards are not needed as workers are “entrepreneurs” who set their own rates, earn more than employees, enjoy the flexibility of working when and where they want, and are doing this work as a “side hustle” on top of more substantial jobs.

    None of this is true of the majority of care and support workers on platforms. Most (70 per cent) believe they are employees of the platform, even though they’re not. Even the platforms’ own data shows that workers from groups likely to be vulnerable to exploitation – migrants and younger workers – are over-represented on platforms. Many workers are paid below the relevant award minimum pay rate.

    It makes little sense to refer to jobs as side hustles when 4 out of 5 home and community-based care and support jobs (on and off platforms) are part-time, often short-hours jobs.

    Just because jobs are part-time, or a worker holds multiple jobs, doesn’t mean fair pay and working conditions don’t matter.

    For decades, women had to put up with undervalued work while employers, economists and public policy makers argued women worked in care jobs for love rather than money, and their earnings were not essential income. Present-day arguments opposing minimum standards are a little different, however, they would achieve the same end, perpetuating undervaluation and gender inequality.

    The post We Cannot Truly Value ‘Care’ Until Workers Using Digital Labour Platforms Get Fair Pay and Conditions appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.