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Author: Future Admin

  • What Next for Casual Work? Professor Andrew Stewart webinar recording

    What do these new developments mean for the further spread of casual and precarious work? What are the other implications of the High Court ruling for future employer strategies? And what options remain for limiting the spread of casual and insecure work? To examine these matters and their implications, we were recently joined by renowned labour law expert Professor Andrew Stewart from the University of Adelaide.

    Andrew’s highly informative presentation can be viewed below:

    The post What Next for Casual Work? Professor Andrew Stewart webinar recording appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Active Policy Measures Needed to Stop Decline of Journalism

    The media and information industries have lost some 60,000 jobs in Australia over the last 15 years. With almost half of those jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, new research shows active policy supports are urgently needed to stabilise and protect the ‘public good’ function of journalism.

    A new report by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, The Future of Work in Journalism, catalogues the employment and economic damage wrought in media and information industries by the combination of technological change, new business models, and globalisation. The report was commissioned by the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), who are urging the Federal Government to step up its support for Australian domestic journalism.

    Key findings:

    • The broader information, media, and telecommunications industry lost over 30,000 jobs between 2007 (its peak employment) and 2019.
    • Publishing was the worst-affected sub-sector, losing over half of its jobs as newspapers and other print media grappled with new technologies and major losses. Almost 30,000 more jobs have also been lost in this sector since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • New jobs in digital activities (such as internet publishing) are not offsetting the loss of work in conventional media.
    • Jobs remaining in the media industry have become more insecure: with almost one-third of positions part-time, and a growing share of casual and contractor positions.
    • Real wages are falling in the media industry, despite a dramatic increase in labour productivity.
    • Real value-added per employee in media industries has been growing at 4% per year since 2012, but real labour compensation has been falling.

    “It is ironic that we supposedly live in an ‘information economy’ yet Australia’s capacity to contribute fully and successfully to that information era is crumbling due to financial losses and massive job destruction,” said Dr Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “Workers in industries like journalism are producing more than ever despite the turmoil of technological change, job losses and restructuring. But the extraordinary effort by workers is not translating into more secure or better paid jobs—quite the contrary.

    “Quality journalism is a public good, with the distribution of reliable information to citizens the key to a well-functioning modern democracy—particularly in times of crisis, like the pandemic. The failure of private markets to sustainably supply this service necessitates public policy action to stabilise the industry and support continued quality journalism,” Dr Stanford said.

    Marcus Strom, the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance’s (MEAA) Media Federal President, urged the Commonwealth Government to step-up its support for domestic journalism.

    “The report makes clear that years’ of disruption, undermining and neglect have left Australian journalism and journalists in a fragile state,” said Marcus Strom, Media Federal President at the MEAA.

    “Public interest journalism is a public good. It informs and entertains Australians, ensures the public’s right to know, and holds the powerful to account. If Australians want that to continue, then there is no time to waste to address the many challenges facing journalism,” Mr Strom said.

    The post Active Policy Measures Needed to Stop Decline of Journalism appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Insecure Workers Have Been the Shock Troops of the COVID-19 Pandemic: New Report

    New research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work confirms that workers in casual and insecure jobs have borne the lion’s share of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic – both the first lockdowns in 2020, and the more recent Delta-wave of closures.

    Key Findings:

    • Since May, workers in casual and part-time jobs have suffered over 70% of job losses from renewed lockdowns and workplace closures.
    • Casual workers have been 8 times more likely to lose work than permanent staff. Meanwhile, part-time workers have been 4.5 times more likely to lose work than full-timers.
    • The report documents the disproportionate concentration of insecure work among women, young workers, and in the retail and hospitality sectors. Women hold over 53% of all casual jobs, but only 48% of permanent roles.
    • Average wages are much lower in insecure jobs. Casual workers, on average, earn 26% less per hour and 52% less per week than permanent workers – contrary to the common assumption that casual workers receive higher wages to offset their lack of entitlements and job protections.
    • The research estimates that if casual workers received the same hourly wages as permanent staff, overall wage incomes in Australia would grow by $30 billion per year, or 3.5%. That would mark a welcome change from the past eight consecutive years of record-low wage growth.
    • The report also shows that less than half of working Australians now hold a permanent, full-time waged job with entitlements. The traditional norm of a ‘standard’ job has been eroded on all sides by part-time jobs, casual work, temporary and contractor jobs, precarious forms of self-employment, and (more recently) on-demand gig work.

    “Workers in insecure jobs have been the shock troops of the pandemic,” said Dr Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and report author.

    “They suffered by far the deepest casualties during the first round of layoffs. Then they were sent back into battle, as the economy temporarily recovered. But now their livelihoods are being shot down again, in mass numbers.

    “It is bad enough that workers in these jobs do not receive basic entitlements like paid sick leave or severance protections. But even when they are working, they are paid far less than other workers.

    “The long-term and multi-faceted expansion of insecure work, in all its forms, is ripping apart economic and social stability in Australia.”

    “Recent changes in labour law, which confirm the right of employers to use casual labour in any position — even stable long-term roles — will lead to further expansion of insecure work once the pandemic is over. New pathways for workers to convert to permanent status have numerous limitations and exemptions, and will not significantly affect growing job insecurity.”

    The post Insecure Workers Have Been the ‘Shock Troops’ of the COVID-19 Pandemic: New Report appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Fair Pay Agreements: How Workers in NZ Are Getting Their Share

    The Centre for Future Work hosted a special webinar with Craig Renney, Economist & Director of Policy for the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. In the recorded webinar, Craig explains key FPA policy details including design & coverage of the system, and how FPAs can lift wages and labour standards, stop the ‘race to the bottom’, and rebuild worker bargaining power in NZ. The webinar is the first in the Centre’s exciting new webinar series exploring key labour market topics related to work, wages, and fairness. Hosted by our Senior Economist Alison Pennington.

    Craig Renney’s presentation slides presented for the webinar are available below.

    The Centre for Future Work has published research on several ambitious progressive labour reforms pursued in New Zealand. For more, please read Workplace Policy Reform in New Zealand: What are the Lessons for Australia?, by Alison Pennington.

    The post Fair Pay Agreements: How Workers in NZ Are Getting Their Share appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • When the Show Cannot Go On: Rebooting Australia’s Arts & Entertainment Sector After COVID-19

    New research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, written by Senior Economist Alison Pennington and Monash University’s Ben Eltham, reveals the ongoing, devastating impact of COVID-19 on Australia’s arts and entertainment sector and provides a series of recommendations to government that would reboot the creative sector following the crisis.

    Key Findings:

    • The arts and entertainment sector is a significant employer in Australia that makes a substantial contribution to the economy.
    • More people work in broad cultural industries (over 350,000) than many other areas of the economy that are receiving greater policy supports, including aviation (40,500) and coal mining (48,900).
    • Despite years of significant funding pressures and policy neglect, the arts and entertainment sector contributed $17 billion in GDP to the Australian economy in 2018-19.
    • However, due to their disproportionately insecure and precarious labour market conditions, arts and entertainment sector workers are experiencing significant ruptures in their employment arrangements due to COVID-19 and the federal government has not adequately responded to the scale and severity of the crisis.
    • Looking ahead, adequate support to rebuild the sector should include: expanding funding to community arts organisations and artists; introducing a new Commonwealth creative fellowships program; creating a whole-of-Australia public streaming platform; introducing an Australian content quota on all services, including international streaming platforms; introducing a digital platforms levy to fund a merged-content production fund; better coordinating cultural policy between federal, state and local government levels, especially during the COVID-19 recovery; and strengthening pay and conditions for arts and entertainment sector workers.

    Quotes attributable to Ben Eltham, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University:

    “COVID-19 has badly damaged Australia’s arts and cultural sector. Rolling lockdowns and health restrictions have devastated the live entertainment sector. Around the world, millions of artists and cultural workers have been thrown out of work by the pandemic,” Eltham said.

    “Tens of thousands of artists now face lockdowns across major cities without adequate protections for their jobs, incomes and productions.

    “The Morrison government’s policy response to the crisis has been late and inadequate. The Morrison government’s attacks on universities, the ABC and local production quotas are all bad news for the future of Australian culture.

    “The pandemic has changed the way we think about creativity and culture. Australians have turned to the arts in their time of need, embracing cultural pastimes during extended lockdowns. We have rediscovered the value of culture, even as the pandemic has spread.

    “Old arguments about government spending have been turned on their head. For many artists, JobKeeper was the first time they had been able to draw a steady, liveable income from their craft. The massive cash injection shows that Australians can afford a better society and culture if we want.”

    Quotes attributable to Alison Pennington, Senior Economist, Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute:

    “Destructive market-first policies eroded the richness and diversity of arts and culture in Australia long-before COVID-19 hit. Endless short-term grant cycles and philanthropic dependency is not a place the arts and culture sector should “snap back” to,” Pennington said.

    “Australia needs a total public-led reboot of the arts. This cultural reconstruction must ensure that the sector does not just survive the pandemic, but stands ready to flourish on the other side. It must lay the groundwork for a sustainable, vibrant future for the arts and culture, built through ambitious public investment and planning across many sectors of our cultural economy.

    “Australia’s arts and cultural sector needs an ambitious public investment program to provide reliable funding for arts organisations from the grassroots-up, provide arts education to all children, and rebuild cultural labour markets to ensure that artists and cultural workers earn decent, living incomes.”

    The post When the Show Cannot Go On: Rebooting Australia’s Arts & Entertainment Sector After COVID-19 appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Why is Job Quality Worsening?

    In this update on job insecurity in Australia, Alison Pennington reviews the ongoing erosion of full-time, traditional “good” jobs, growth in COVID-era “gig” work, and outlines how business trends and labour market policies have facilitated both lower worker bargaining power and a dramatic rise in insecure work.

    For more on reducing the incidence and consequences of insecure work, see our recent submission to the Select Committee on Job Insecurity, by Dan Nahum.

    The post Why is Job Quality Worsening? appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • New Research: Commonwealth Can Afford $10b for Aged Care Recommendations

    Implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety will require additional Commonwealth funding of at least $10 billion per year, and there are several revenue tools which the government could use to raise those funds, according to a new report on funding high-quality aged care released by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    Key Findings:

    • While the Royal Commission’s 148 recommendations were not explicitly costed, the Centre for Future Work report shows that $10 billion per year (approximately 0.5% of Australia’s GDP) would be the minimum required to move forward with the urgent reforms in regulation, employment practices, and quality benchmarks advised by the Commission.
    • Australia’s public spending on aged care is much lower than other industrial countries with better records of aged care service. It also notes that Australia’s overall tax collections are also much smaller (by about 5% of GDP) than the OECD average, and have declined relative to Australia’s GDP in recent years.
    • The report recommends that initial improvements in aged care funding should proceed immediately. With the Budget projected to incur major deficits for many years (due to the COVVID-19 pandemic and recession), it is neither necessary nor appropriate to fully ‘fund’ incremental aged care spending in the initial and most urgent years of reform.
    • However, as economic and fiscal conditions stabilise, additional revenue sources will be important in underpinning high-quality aged care. The report highlights five specific options for raising additional revenue – two of which were proposed by the respective Royal Commissioners:
      • A 1 percentage-point Medicare-style flat-rate levy (proposed by Royal Commissioner Briggs)
      • A set of modest adjustments to personal income tax rates, preserving the existing progressivity of the system (similar to the proposal of Commissioner Pagone)
      • Cancelling the legislated Stage Three income tax cuts scheduled to begin in 2024 (which deliver most savings to the highest-income households)
      • Reforms in the treatment of capital gains and dividend income in the personal income tax system
      • Reforms to company taxes to eliminate loopholes and raise additional revenues

    “Australia is one of the richest countries in the world. There should be no argument over whether we can afford to provide top-quality, respectful care to the elders who helped build our economy and our society,” said Dr Jim Stanford, Director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and co-author of the report.

    “The government has access to a whole suite of revenue options to support the ambitious and quick implementation of the Royal Commission’s recommendations. That effort must start with the 2021-22 Commonwealth budget.

    “There is no immutable economic or fiscal constraint holding back the government from doing right by Australia’s elders. The only question is whether this government places enough priority on caring for seniors with the quality and dignity they deserve,” Dr Stanford said.

    ANMF members have been calling out the failures in aged care for many years and urging governments to make the changes needed to ensure dignified care for older Australians. Governments have ignored these calls for as many years. This cannot continue. The findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Safety and Quality have made this abundantly clear,” said Annie Butler, ANMF Federal Secretary.

    “This research demonstrates both the need for investment in the aged care sector and how it can be achieved leaving the Government with no legitimate excuses for continued inaction.

    “However, there must be appropriate “strings attached” to any increases in funding provided to aged care providers, providers must be made fully and transparently accountable for the use of taxpayers’ money and assure Australians that their money is going directly to quality care for their loved ones.

    “If Australia is to regard itself as a compassionate, decent society the Morrison Government must stop the suffering and neglect of older Australians by acting now,” Ms Butler said.

    “This report explains why aged care workers are left in tears after their shifts,” said Caroyln Smith, United Workers Union Aged Care Director.

    “The $10 billion annual funding shortfall is leading to horrendous human costs in aged care, with older Australians left unsafe and vulnerable, and workers left physically and emotionally exhausted.

    “This report once again underlines that the Federal Government needs to substantially and effectively address the human toll the aged care crisis is taking on older Australians, their families and aged care workers,” Ms Smith said.

    The post New Research: Commonwealth Can Afford $10b for Aged Care Recommendations appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Australia’s Electricity Infrastructure Undermined by $1 Billion Per Year Under Investment

    The resilience of Australia’s electricity infrastructure is being undermined by a chronic pattern of underinvestment in maintenance and upkeep, the result of rent-seeking by private electricity producers and a deeply flawed regulatory system.

    That is the conclusion of a detailed review of empirical and qualitative data on the transmission and distribution system contained in a new report from the Australia Institute.

    Key findings:

    • The electricity grid is facing increasing challenges: including increased severe weather events, bushfires, and the need to reliably integrate new renewable energy generation into the system. But years of underinvestment in capital and maintenance have left the system vulnerable to disruptions, failures, and disasters.
    • The report shows that maintenance and operating costs across the system should be increased by at least $1 billion per year, to match historical levels of real spending per electricity customer.Real per capita operating and maintenance expenditures have been slashed by 28% (in distribution) and 33% (in transmission) compared to 2006 levels.
    • The electricity industry is allocating just 15% of its revenues to capital spending, despite the needs for new capacity and upgrading – down from 25% in 2007.
    • Within this shrunken envelope of operating and maintenance costs, the industry’s focus has shifted away from hands-on upkeep of the grid in favour of managers, sales staff, financial experts, and other overhead functions. There are now 40% more office managers and professionals working in the industry (mostly in finance and sales) than electricians.
    • With this expansion of unproductive corporate bureaucracies, productivity in electricity has performed worse than any other sector in Australia’s economy: real output per hour worked has fallen one-third since 2007. This trend is worsened by chronic underinvestment in hands-on maintenance and upkeep, causing greater vulnerability to outages, accidents, and shut-downs.
    • A perverse pattern of behaviour has emerged in the regulatory system, whereby transmission and distribution companies submit requests for operating expenses which the AER seemingly rolls back – only to have those artificial budgets underspent by the companies, who are allowed to keep some of the savings. This artificial process has padded already-rich profits of energy companies, while ignoring the real needs of the grid for improved equipment and reliability.
    • The statistical analysis in the report is supplemented by evidence gathered from 25 front-line power industry workers, who attest to their personal experiences with underinvestment, poor maintenance, safety hazards, and environmental damage.
    • The report makes 7 recommendations for regulatory reforms that would allocate more resources to the real work of maintaining and upgrading the grid (so it is better prepared for future challenges like climate change and growing renewable generation), while reducing the waste of unproductive financial and speculative activities.

    “The stresses on Australia’s electricity grid are becoming more severe – including climate change, bushfires, and integrating renewable energy. We should be investing more in the quality and safety of the grid, not less. But the combination of energy company greed and deeply flawed regulatory practices is producing systematic underinvestment in this vital piece of electrical infrastructure,” said Dr. Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “Australia’s fragmented, irrational electricity system has produced soaring prices for consumers, shaky reliability, but soaring profits. It’s time to rethink the fundamental priorities of the regulatory system – starting with channeling more needed investment into the power grid,” Dr Stanford said.

    “Over the past 15 years, high-vis maintenance and transmission workers have been replaced by telemarketers, spin-doctors and banking spivs. This has done nothing for network reliability, but has left us unprepared for the challenge of extreme weather and the incorporation of renewables to our energy supply,” said Michael Wright, Assistant National Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union.

    “Substantial investment is needed to retool for an unpredictable future. Energy generation and distribution is the backbone of industry and jobs and privatisation has simply cost consumers and jobs. Governments must stop inviting private sector financial parasites to feast on our energy system and instead focus on the mammoth task of preparing for climate change,” Mr Wright said.

    The post Australia’s Electricity Infrastructure Undermined by $1 Billion Per Year Under Investment appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Rage & Optimism as an Activist Economist

    Alison Pennington explains how rage about how the economy works powers her activist economics.

  • Expansion of Employer Power to Use Casual Work Hurts Women Most

    In this commentary, Senior Economist Alison Pennington explains how new casuals measures and the government’s wider economic policies – including in industrial relations, childcare, welfare, and fiscal spending – significantly undermine the economic security of women, entrench pay inequality, and ultimately, increase their vulnerability to gendered violence.

    This commentary was originally published in Michael West Media.

    Crocodile tears no mask for Coalition’s economic war on women

    Well may Scott Morrison tear up as he relates how his daughters, wife and widowed mother drive his every decision. The facts are that every move of the Coalition government ensures women are poorer, more insecure at work and more vulnerable to violence on the job. The Industrial Relations bill pushed through last week is a final nail in the coffin for women. Alison Pennington reports.

    After a month of anger from women around the country about sexual harassment and the treatment of women in the workplace, federal parliament passed legislation last week that will strike a massive, lasting blow to women’s job quality and pay, entrenching pay inequality and exacerbating women’s economic insecurity.

    The mainstream media has mainly focused on the fact that most of the Industrial Relations bill didn’t pass. But the cornerstone of the legislation – and the primary reason for its inception, pre-pandemic, by business lobbyists – did.

    A new legal definition of casual work will allow employers to call any job a casual one. Jobs can now look and smell like permanent jobs, except that employers can legally engage you as a casual, stripping away your legal entitlements at will.

    So-called “permanency conversion” rights in the legislation are so weak that employers will easily craft employment arrangements to lock in casual jobs long-term.

    Employers will simply vary rosters

    Employers will vary rosters sufficiently to ensure that employees will never reach the benchmarks of six and 12 months of regular schedules that should lead to permanency. In any case, employers will be allowed to refuse offers on “reasonable grounds”. And small businesses, which employ a huge 44% of all private sector employees, are exempted entirely.

    The federal government’s new casual laws will expand the incidence of casual work. Women will disproportionately suffer in a labour market with diminishing opportunities to obtain secure, decent jobs because women are more likely to be in casual roles (filling 54% of all casual positions). And women’s vulnerability to casualisation is growing. Women accounted for 62% of all new casual jobs created in the period from May to November 2020.

    Casual workers are not compensated

    Despite claims from employers that casual workers are compensated for the loss of entitlements and lack of predictability in rosters and tenure, nothing could be further from the truth.

    Casual workers are, on average, paid far less than employees in permanent roles. Median weekly earnings of full-time casuals were 23% lower ($1080 per week) than those in permanent roles ($1400 per week), and 45% lower for casual part-time workers ($390 per week) compared with permanent part-time workers on $720 per week.

    The expansion of the power of employers to use casual work in a jobs market awash with many hungry mouths desperate for paid work means more women in lower-paying, insecure jobs.

    The government’s decision to subject the unemployed to a below-poverty JobSeeker rate means more women reliant on employers to survive. At every move the Liberal National party government is making Australian women poorer, more insecure and more vulnerable to violence on the job.

    Women return to lower quality jobs

    Treasurer Josh Frydenberg celebrates the recent fall in the unemployment rate to 5.8 per cent, claiming the recovery is well under way. But the detailed job quality data tell a very different story for women.

    Women workers are “snapping back” to a world of paid work on inferior terms compared with men – fewer hours, less pay and less security.

    Casual jobs accounted for 64.3% of the total growth in women’s employment from May to November last year.

    Alarmingly, more than half of all the growth in women’s employment over the six-month period was in both low-hours and insecure work, with 52.4% of total growth in employees in part-time casual jobs.

    Traditional full-time permanent jobs with normal entitlements (such as paid sick leave, holidays and superannuation) represented a dismal 10.4% of female employment growth from May through November.

    It’s a crude fact that as women’s casual jobs were booming, business lobbyists were pushing for passage of the IR Bill on the basis that employers “lacked confidence” to hire casuals due to legal “uncertainty”. Australia was simultaneously experiencing the largest and fastest increase in casual employment in its history.

    More fuel for gender pay gap fire

    The consequences of an employment recovery overwhelmingly concentrated in part-time and casual jobs for women is more fuel for the gender pay gap fire.

    The gender pay gap is most often measured by comparing the earnings of men and women in full-time jobs. But women face persistent barriers to workforce participation – including unaffordable childcare, lack of family-friendly work arrangements, and workplace discrimination. Consequently, almost half (45.1%) of all employed women are in part-time work.

    Measuring the gender pay gap using total average earnings data (including both full-time and part-time workers, and bonuses and overtime as well as ordinary time wages) indicates that the gender pay gap is 31% across all jobs – a more dire, but more accurate, measure of the pay gap.

    Ironically, the gender pay gap narrowed in the early stages of pandemic and recession. From late-2019 to May 2020, the gap between male and female total wage incomes declined from 31.4% to 29.6% – down by 1.8 percentage points.

    But this did not represent “progress” in pay equality. The gap only closed because more than 300,000 women in low-paid casual roles lost their jobs, which increased the average earnings of those women who were able to stay connected to the workforce.

    How good’s “snap back”?

    As the economy recovered from May last year, an influx of women’s lower-paying jobs widened the gender pay gap again, just as quickly. How good’s “snap back”?

    Instead of improving the quantity and quality of jobs for women, governments have actively pursued policies that will exacerbate pay inequality this year and into the future.

    In addition to casual work changes pushed through in the IR bill, two other policies create higher barriers to women’s participation in paid work, and suppress their pay once they get on the job.

    The federal government and all states and territories (bar Tasmania and Victoria) have imposed punitive and counterproductive public sector wage freezes and caps on their workforces. This suppression of public sector pay hurts women most because they account for 61.7% of all public sector jobs.

    The failure of government to provide affordable, quality childcare presents another major barrier to women’s paid work opportunities. After dangling free childcare in front of families early in the pandemic, the federal government cut supports and reintroduced fees after just three months.

    The return of full-fee, high-cost childcare prices women out of paid work. More than half of women with young children outside the workforce list childcare costs as a key factor in their decision not to work. A childcare system that lets a small number of profit-driven providers determine access denies families and their children access to critical developmental education and much-needed community bonds as people emerge from pandemic-era isolation.

    Rebuilding women’s economic security requires a very different approach from the bankrupt austerity agenda of government. Women need more and better quality jobs, free childcare, a superannuation system that provides genuine income security and an employment relations system that works to lift the quality, pay and safety of their jobs, not undermine it.

    The post Expansion of Employer Power to Use Casual Work Hurts Women Most appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.