My Blog

Author: Future Admin

  • Profit-Price Spiral: Excess Profits Fuelling Inflation & Interest Rates, not Wages

    The dramatic expansion of business profits has gone mostly ignored by the RBA and other macroeconomic policy-makers, who have focused instead on a supposed ‘wage-price’ spiral which does not exist. This suggests the focus of the RBA on wage restraint is misplaced and unfair, and that interest rates would be far lower today if companies had not gouged customers at the checkout.

    The report Profit-Price Spiral: The Truth Behind Australia’s Inflation (attached) comes in the same week supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles posted soaring profits, with banks, gas and petrol companies posting similarly soaring returns.

    Key Findings:

    • A Profit-Price spiral is the main driver of inflation in Australia, rather than a supposed “Wage-Price” spiral, which does not exist
    • As of the September quarter of 2022 (most recent data available), Australian businesses increased prices by a total of $160 billion per year over and above their higher expenses for labour, taxes, and other inputs, and over and above profits generated by growth in real economic output
    • Without the inclusion of those excess profits in final prices for Australian-made goods and services, inflation since the pandemic would have been much slower: an annual average of 2.7% per year, barely half of the 5.2% annual average actually recorded since end-2019.
    • That pace of inflation would have fallen within the RBA’s target inflation band (equal to its 2.5% target, plus-or-minus 0.5%)
    • Excess corporate profits account for 69% of additional inflation beyond the RBA’s target. Rising unit labour costs account for just 18% of that inflation
    • The RBAs 9 back-to-back interest rate rises would have been unlikely without excess profits and prices based on the RBA’s own policy framework
    • Real wages in Australia fell 4.5% in 2022, the largest fall on record

    “This empirical evidence shows excess corporate profits are the main culprit driving inflation, not workers’ wages,” said Dr. Jim Stanford from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “For Australians doing it tough this data would be aggravating.

    “We’ve been told a story that workers need to restrict wage growth and accept a permanent reduction in living standards in order to fix inflation. This evidence shows that’s an economic fairytale.

    “ABS data shows that without excess price hikes through the pandemic, inflation would likely be within the RBA target band, and hence there would be no need for the nine extreme, back-to-back interest rate rises that are crushing households and mortgage holders, fuelling the cost-of-living crisis.

    “The pain experienced by workers through current inflation contrasts sharply with unprecedented increases in business profitability at the same time.

    “Through this episode of post-COVID inflation, real wages have declined rapidly, labour’s share of GDP has declined, and corporate profits have set records. That is completely opposite from the experience of the 1970s, when real wages rose, labour’s share of GDP increased, and corporate profit margins fell.

    “History confirms that fears of a 1970s-style ‘wage price spiral’ are simply not justified or grounded in reality. Instead, inflation in Australia since the pandemic clearly reflects a profit-price dynamic.”

    The new report ‘Profit-Price Spiral: The Truth Behind Australia’s Inflation’ is attached and comes from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, by Dr. Jim Stanford.

    Supermarkets, banks and petrol companies have recently posted huge profits:

    The post Profit-Price Spiral: Excess Profits Fuelling Inflation & Interest Rates, not Wages appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Jailing climate protestor Violet Coco shows anti-protest laws have gone too far

    The anti-protest laws that have swept the country are a threat to us all, even if you’ve never attended a protest in your life. Governments are writing and passing laws which authorise companies to legally cause harm to our community and environment, while jailing individuals seeking to stop such harm through non-violent protest.

    The draconian jail sentence handed down to climate protestor Violet Coco is grossly disproportionate and should ring alarm bells for anyone concerned about living in a free and fair democracy.

    Coco was part of a protest that stopped one lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for 28 minutes and she has been sentenced to jail for 15 months and refused bail. Jail is supposed to be a last resort, but this is a harsh sentence that would usually be reserved for breaching an AVO, or for serious and repeated property and theft offences. For comparison, a Canberra man was recently sentenced to 15 months jail for his role in kidnapping, beating and waterboarding another man over a dispute about missing drugs. Violet Coco was peaceful and didn’t physically harm anyone yet received a similar sentence. Are we really content to be a country that doles out prison sentences for the crime of mildly inconveniencing people?

    No matter if you support or oppose their methods, non-violent protest can be an act of community service. Like the pain signals our brain sends us when we are injured – protest is one way we know there is an injury to our community or to our natural environment that needs to be stopped or repaired.

    Draconian anti-protest laws have now been passed in several states including New South Wales, Victoria and more recently Tasmania. The laws have passed with the support of both the Labor and Liberal parties and are mainly targeted at environmental and climate protestors, though you can bet that governments won’t stop with environmental protestors.

    The purpose of these anti-protest laws is not to protect the community, but to limit the right to protest and to protect business interests above democratic interests. In its submission on Tasmania’s new anti-protest laws, the Australia Institute Tasmania, said: “[The law] continues to preference businesses’ ability to carry out work over the right of people to protest by giving broad powers to police to arrest peaceful protestors and imposing harsh penalties”.

    Tasmania’s laws could see a community member protesting the destruction of old growth forests on a forestry site face a penalty of over $13,000 or two years in prison. Obstructing a business while trespassing risks one year imprisonment. These are similar penalties to those who trespass while holding a gun, drug another person or perpetrate aggravated assault. Under Tasmania’s new laws, holding a placard will be treated roughly the same as holding a gun.

    We know these laws aren’t passed to protect the interests of the Australian community because while Violet Coco is going to jail for causing a temporary traffic jam, companies that cause real and lasting damage to the environment and the community get away virtually scot free.

    For example, no executive from Rio Tinto went to jail for permanently destroying 46,000 years of world history and heritage in the Juukan Gorge rock shelters.. No coal company executive has ever been jailed for helping to cause climate change, which is turbo-charging the extreme weather events wreaking havoc and billions of dollars in damages upon communities across the country every year. Australia has one of the worst extinction rates for mammals, yet for decades we have chosen to exempt native forest logging from our national environmental laws that are supposed to protect threatened species, something the federal Labor government is now seeking to rectify. Companies are routinely authorised by governments to cause harm to community and to our natural environment while individuals are punished for peacefully protesting to stop such harms.

    Often it is governments that impose harms on the community. Until the Freedom Rides of the 1960s, public pools were still segregated in parts of Australia, prohibiting Aboriginal people from swimming with white people. Homosexuality was a crime in Tasmania until 1997 when years of protest resulted in gay law reforms, and let us not forget equal marriage has only been legal for five years. And former Greens Leader Bob Brown was once shot at during protests against logging at Tasmania’s Farmhouse Creek and he was arrested again this year, fighting the same fight to protect Australia’s forests.

    Whether it be the struggle for basic human rights, like the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and the fight for equal marriage, or to struggle to protect our natural world from destruction, like the battle to end whaling in the Southern Ocean, or to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest—many just causes are radical until they become inevitable.

    The Franklin River blockade saw around 1500 people arrested and 600 jailed, including Bob Brown who spent 19 days in Risdon Prison. But the day after his release in 1983, he was elected as the first Green in Tasmania’s Parliament. The Franklin River flows freely today thanks to those protestors. Australians owe a debt of gratitude to all those protestors who have been willing to risk jail to stand up for what’s right. But just because protestors are willing to risk jail, does not make harsh jail sentences for protests any less draconian or anti-democratic.

    Some people may not agreewith the methods of climate protestors, but causing a traffic jam is hardly a reason to send someone to jail for more than a year. Especially not when climate change is fuelling extreme weather events that are severely impacting Australians across the country. It is imperative that all of us fight to repeal the anti-democratic laws that have been passed by state governments around the country. Because the reality is that the right to peacefully protest is as fundamental to a healthy democracy as free and fair elections.

    The post Jailing climate protestor Violet Coco shows anti-protest laws have gone too far appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Deal on IR Reforms Sets Stage for Faster Wage Growth

    A legislative consensus reached over the weekend to approve reforms to industrial relations laws sets the stage for rebuilding collective bargaining and a significant acceleration of wage growth, according to research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “These reforms will lift wage growth and improve fairness in workplaces across Australia, big and small, in all sectors of the economy,” said Dr Jim Stanford, Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work.

    “These measures will rebuild collective bargaining, enhance gender equity, ensure greater transparency, and equip workers with critical tools to pursue fair treatment,” Dr Stanford said.

    Research published by the Centre for Future Work suggests collective bargaining coverage will rebound under the new laws, which will allow for multi-employer collective bargaining in certain circumstances. Bargaining coverage in Australia has declined dramatically since 2013, with just 11% of private sector workers now covered by a current enterprise agreement. That fall in coverage has been the largest single cause of record-slow wage growth over the last decade.

    Based on the historical relationship between bargaining coverage and wage growth, rebuilding coverage toward pre-2013 levels will lift nominal wage growth by 1.6 percentage points per year. Additional wage growth of that magnitude would lift annual incomes for a typical worker by almost $1500 in just one year, and a cumulative total of almost $24,000 over five years.

    Another provision in the reform package is a new limit on the ability of employers to unilaterally terminate expired enterprise agreements during their renegotiation. Many employers have used this loophole to wipe out years of collective bargaining gains. A recent example was Qantas’s threat earlier this year to terminate its agreement for cabin crew. Centre for Future Work modeling shows that could have cost senior staff as much as $67,000 per year. This so-called ‘nuclear option’ in employers’ arsenal will be prohibited under the new laws.

    “With the post-pandemic acceleration of inflation, many years of wage stagnation have now tipped over into the fastest decline in real wages in Australian history,” said Dr Stanford.

    “This bill is a needed and timely response to an unprecedented crisis in workers’ living standards.

    “I congratulate the legislators, including Minister Tony Burke, Greens Leader Adam Bandt, and Senator David Pocock, for negotiating this package and working to approve it in Parliament,” Dr Stanford said.

    The post Deal on IR Reforms Sets Stage for Faster Wage Growth appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Australians Working 6 Weeks Unpaid Overtime, Costing Economy Over $92 Billion: GHOTD Report

    New research shows Australian workers are on average working 6 weeks unpaid overtime per year, costing over $92 billion dollars in unpaid wages across the economy. The average worker is losing over $8,000 per year or $315 per fortnight due to what researchers have branded “time theft”.

    23 November 2022 marks Go Home on Time Day, an initiative run by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and now in its fourteenth year.

    Economists have recommended a ‘Right to Disconnect’ to tackle what they say is the systemic problem of unpaid overtime. The research reveals that employers are profiting from 2.5 billion hours of time theft worth over $92 billion in unpaid wages amid a cost-of-living crisis and declining real wages.

    Key Findings:

    • The average Australian worker performs 6 weeks unpaid overtime per year, worth over $8,000 per worker per year
    • The ‘Right to Disconnect’ is supported by six in seven (84%) workers, and has recently been recommended by the Senate Select Committee on Work & Care
    • Across the workforce, this equates to $92 billion in lost income per year, roughly the same as the Commonwealth’s annual expenditure on healthcare
    • Workers share of national income is at an all-time low of 44% in 2022, while the profit share of income is at an almost record high of 30%
    • Respondents reported 4.3 hours of unpaid work per week, equivalent to 15% of total working hours. This equates to 224.3 hours per year per worker, or six standard 38- hour work weeks.
    • Across the whole labour market, over half of all workers (56%) are unsatisfied with their working hours
    • Almost one in two (46%) workers in Australia reported that they wanted more paid hours
    • 84% workers support the Federal Government legislating a ‘Right to Disconnect’ that directs employers to avoid contacting workers outside of work hours, unless in an emergency, with only 8% who oppose

    Negative impacts from unpaid overtime:

    • The most commonly experienced negative consequences were physical tiredness (35%), followed by stress and anxiety (32%), and being mentally drained (31%), each affecting around a third of workers.
    • Over a quarter of workers reported that overtime interfered with their personal life and relationships (27%), and 17% responded that it led to disrupted or unfulfilling non-work time.
    • One in five workers identified that working outside scheduled hours negatively affected their relationship with work, with 22% who reported reduced motivation to work and 19% experienced poor job satisfaction.

    “Our research shows unpaid overtime is a systemic, multibillion-dollar problem which robs Australian workers of time and money,” said Eliza Littleton, research economist at the Australia Institute and report author.

    “This is time theft. Unpaid overtime harms our quality of life and reduces our time with family, friends, and those we care for.

    “This Go Home on Time Day, our research reveals that unpaid overtime is robbing Australian workers and the economy of over $92 billion per year. This time theft only further exacerbates our current cost of living crisis.

    “With workers share of national income at the lowest point ever, a focus on reducing unpaid overtime would improve quality of life and ease the cost of living pressure for millions.

    “The prevalence of overtime suggests that ‘availability creep’ has eroded the boundaries between work and life.

    “Workplace laws could be updated, including creating a ‘Right to Disconnect’ as recommended by the Senate Select Committee into Work & Care, and as exists for employees of Victoria Police, and Queensland Teachers”

    The post Australians Working 6 Weeks Unpaid Overtime, Costing Economy Over $92 Billion: Go Home on Time Day Report appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Restoring Collective Bargaining Coverage Would Boost Wage Growth: Research Report

    Proposed reforms to Australia’s industrial relations laws are likely to support higher coverage for collective bargaining in the national labour market, and provide a boost to stagnant wage growth according to new research from the Centre for Future Work.

    The report reviews historical data on the erosion of collective bargaining in Australia, and its close correlation to the slowdown in wage growth visible after 2013. The authors find that the decline of collective bargaining coverage (which fell by almost half in the private sector since 2013) explains over 50% of the change in wage growth during that same time.

    “Restoring collective bargaining is vital to any strategy to get wages growing again in Australia,” said Dr. Jim Stanford, co-author of the report and Director of the Centre for Future Work.

    “International evidence indicates that requires the ability to undertake bargaining at a multi-employer level.”

    Key Points from Report:

    • Each one percentage point loss of bargaining coverage has been associated with a reduction in annual wage growth of 0.15 percentage points.
    • There is a clear and predictable relationship between countries which support broader multi-employer bargaining, and the level of bargaining coverage which they achieve.
    • The reforms contemplated in the Secure Jobs, Better Wages legislation would incrementally restore collective bargaining coverage in Australia: by relaxing current restrictions on multi-employer bargaining, and supporting bargaining through other measures (such as limitations on employer termination of enterprise agreements, stronger dispute settlement provisions, and streamlined processes for approving new agreements).
    • These reforms would elevate bargaining coverage in Australia toward a level typical of other countries where most bargaining still occurs at the enterprise level (as would be true under these reforms), but supplemented by some multi-employer bargaining and broader coordination. The OECD has identified a group of these countries, with an average bargaining coverage rate of 33%.
    • That would reverse most (but not all) of the loss in coverage experienced over the past decade.
    • Considering the observed correlation between bargaining coverage and wage growth, this would lead to an improvement in nominal wage growth of 1.6 percentage points per year.
    • Just one year of wage growth at this faster pace would boost annual earnings for a worker with average full-time wages by $1473. That increment would expand to $8300 by the fifth year of (compounded) faster wage growth. On a cumulative basis over the first five years alone, the average worker would receive additional income of almost $24,000.
    • The 1.6-percentage-point increment in annual wage growth would boost aggregate wage incomes by $15 billion in the first year, and $75 billion in the fifth year.

    The post Restoring Collective Bargaining Coverage Would Boost Wage Growth: Research Report appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • IR Reforms To Close Off The Nuclear Option Will Protect Wages and Entitlements

    The paper reviews one dramatic example of this termination threat – dubbed the ‘nuclear option’ by labour law experts (because it ‘blows up’ years of collective bargaining embodied in existing enterprise agreements). Earlier this year, Qantas threatened termination of the EA covering its international cabin crew unless they accepted significant contract concessions.

    The new report confirms that losses from termination, if it had gone ahead, would have been enormous for the affected workers:

    • Hourly wage cuts between 25% and 70%
    • Annual income losses up to $67,000 for the most senior staff
    • Loss of superannuation contributions and investment income, totalling as much as $130,000 and dramatically reducing retirement incomes
    • Painful retrenchment of many working conditions issues (including rest periods and accommodation)

    From the company’s perspective, termination of the EA for just this group of its staff would save $63 million per year, and up to $1 billion over 15 years.

    This threat, backed up by an application for termination lodged with the Fair Work Commission, was sufficient to convince cabin crew staff to accept a new EA containing a two-year wage freeze, real wage cuts, and other compensation and conditions reductions. Staff had earlier voted 97% to reject that agreement. This reversal confirms the termination threat is a very powerful bargaining lever for employers.

    “The scale of the losses experienced by Qantas staff as a result of termination would have been catastrophic,” said Lily Raynes of the Centre for Future Work, co-author of the report.

    “It would undermine their quality of life for the rest of their careers, and indeed right through their retirement,” Ms Raynes said.

    “The ability to credibly threaten termination, even as workers are trying to negotiate a replacement EA, provides a powerful advantage to employers,” said Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work and the other co-author.

    “It shifts the playing field decisively in employers’ favour and has been a major factor in the rapid erosion of collective agreement coverage over the past decade,” Dr Stanford said.

    “Qantas ruthlessly took advantage of this loophole in labour law to threaten cabin crew staff and impose terms and conditions that are blatantly unfair, given this company’s power and profits,” said Teri O’Toole, Federal Secretary of the Flight Attendants’ Association of Australia (one of the unions representing cabin crew at the airline).

    “Qantas, and other greedy companies, will keep doing this unless the legislation is changed,” Ms O’Toole said.

    The report recommends reforms to the Fair Work Act to limit employers’ ability to apply for unilateral termination during renegotiations. Current legislation in Parliament (the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill) would put new restrictions on employers’ ability to terminate EAs during renegotiation.

    The post IR Reforms To Close Off The ‘Nuclear Option’ Will Protect Wages and Entitlements appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • The Reserve Bank needs to acknowledge the failures of the inflation target

    One clear example of the bias of a low-inflation target is the stagnant growth of real household income per capita during the years prior to the pandemic when inflation growth was below the Reserve Bank’s target rate of 2%.

    For a record 33 straight months from September 2016 through May 2019 while real household incomes flatlined, the Reserve Bank kept the cash rate stable at 1.5% despite throughout all this period inflation was below 2%.

    And yet as soon as inflation goes above the target ceiling of 3% the Reserve Bank seeks to increase interest rates quickly to reduce economic activity and also wages growth, even though wages lag well behind inflation.

    “As the Federal Government undertakes its review of the RBA’s mandate and operations, these broad political-economic dimensions of monetary policy must be considered carefully,” said Dr Greg Jericho, Labour Market and Fiscal Policy Director at the Centre for Future Work.

    “There is no evidence at all that a tight labour market, rising wages, or labour costs more generally have anything to do with the surge in inflation since the COVID pandemic. To the contrary, the evidence is clear that wages have had a dampening impact on inflation in this period.

    “The Reserve Bank and the Federal Government need to take a more careful, balanced look at the nature, causes, and consequences of the upsurge in inflation since the pandemic, before leaping to conclusions that are unjustified – and imposing policy responses that do more harm than good.

    “Since the end of 2019 real wages have fallen 3.1% and are expected to fall even further. The inability of wages to keep up with inflation has seen real wages fall back to 2012 levels. This highlights how the real victims of rising inflation have been workers, and the last thing they should be asked to do is suffer even more in the interests of pursuing an arbitrary inflation target.”

    The post The Reserve Bank needs to acknowledge the failures of the inflation target appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Webinar on Wages, Prices, and Power

    Jim Stanford (Economist and Director) and Greg Jericho (Policy Director, Labour Market and Fiscal) from the Centre for Future Work are providing keynote presentations as part of this series. Below is a recording of the first of these presentations, presented by Jim.

    For other resources on inflation, how it is undermining real living standards for workers, and how to fix it (without throwing the whole economy into recession – an even bigger risk!), please see:

    The Wages Crisis: Revisited (Centre for Future Work overview of falling real wages, by Andrew Stewart, Jim Stanford, and Tess Hardy)

    An Economy That Works for People (ACTU Macroeconomics Discussion Paper)

    “The Cure of Inflation Looks Worse than the Disease“ (latest Guardian Australia column by Greg Jericho)

    The post Webinar on Wages, Prices, and Power appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today – a new podcast from the Carmichael Centre

    Laurie Carmichael believed that a worker-centred agenda for technological change was important to achieving better outcomes for society, with workers and their unions playing a pivotal role in shaping technology and skills for social progress.

    The films reviewed in Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today often depict the opposite of a worker-led future of technological change. It’s the aim of the podcast to break down what this looks like, and to suggest what an alternative future – one that benefits workers and humanity – might look like.

    Listeners of YTT can expect podcast episodes to feature accessible political-economic analysis laced with good humour, reflections on accurate (and not-so-accurate) predictions of a future shaped by the neoliberal surveillance state, and a rotating list of special guests, including Dr Jim Stanford, Lily Raynes (Anne Kantor Fellow at the Centre for Future Work), Matt Grudnoff (Senior Economist at The Australia Institute) and more to come.

    Don’t forget to like and subscribe to Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to leave a review – this is what helps other listeners to find and subscribe to YTT, making sure we can keep reaching working people far and wide.

    Listen to the first episode – a review of 1987’s RoboCop – and what it warned us about deindustrialisation, gentrification, privatisation and police militarisation (also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify).

    The post Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today – a new podcast from the Carmichael Centre at the Centre for Future Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • International Seafarers Suffer $65 Million in Wage Theft Annually in Australian Waters

    Seafarers working on foreign-registered freight ships in Australian waters face regular theft of wages and other entitlements due to legal loopholes and lax enforcement of labour standards, according to a new research report published today by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    The report, titled Robbed At Sea, examines records of wage inspections conducted over the last decade by the International Transport Federation (ITF), a global federation of maritime and other transportation unions. The ITF sponsors a small team of 4 inspectors in Australia, to conduct spot checks of international vessels visiting our ports.

    Key points:

    • Over the last decade, in close to 5000 inspections in Australian ports the ITF found 70% of ships failing to meet minimum international standards for wage payment and other core labour standards – with resulting recovery orders totaling $38 million over that time.
    • But the ITF team can only inspect a tiny fraction of all foreign vessels visiting Australian ports: about 450 per year, or just 2.5% of visits by foreign-registered ships in that time. On the basis of reasonable assumptions regarding the prevalence of wage theft in the other, uninspected ships, the report estimates total wage theft from international seafarers across the Australian shipping industry of some $65 million per year.
    • Seafarers on foreign-registered vessels (often flying ‘flags of convenience’ to evade labour and tax rules) usually come from low-wage developing countries, and have little power to resist exploitation by unethical ship owners, contractors, and sub-contractors.
    • Stronger rules in port countries (like Australia) are necessary to offer greater protection while they are in Australian waters. But the report identified several loopholes and enforcement failures that explain why these seafarers are routinely exploited, even when delivering cargo from one Australian port to another.

    “Australia prides itself on being a country that respects the rule of law, and a fair go for workers. Yet we are allowing some of the most vulnerable workers in the entire global economy to be ruthlessly and knowingly exploited, right here in our own waters,” said Rod Pickette, co-author of the report.

    “Repeated inspections have confirmed routine wage theft and other exploitation in our ports,” said Lily Raynes, co-author of the report.

    “But those inspections are just the tip of the iceberg. Clearly this exploitation is a normal feature of international shipping, and Australia has both a moral and an economic responsibility to stop it within our jurisdiction,” Ms Raynes said.

    The report makes ten specific recommendations for reducing the incidence of wage theft from international seafarers in Australian waters.

    Report Recommendations Include:

    • Closing a current legal loophole which allows foreign-registered ships to conduct two trips between Australian ports without needing to respect the Fair Work Act or the Seagoing Industry Award
    • Strengthening inspection resources for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and the Fair Work Ombudsman to ensure that existing rules are better respected

    The report was prepared in cooperation with the International Transport Federation’s Australian Shipping Inspectorate.

    It is being released to commemorate World Maritime Day (Thursday, 29 September) – an annual opportunity to raise awareness about the risks and exploitation faced in international seafarers.

    The post International Seafarers Suffer $65 Million in Wage Theft Annually in Australian Waters appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.