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Author: Jim Stanford

  • Porter IR Bill a Wish List for Business

    This commentary is a longer version of an assessment of the new legislation prepared by Jim Stanford (originally published in The Conversation).

    We Were In This Together… For a Very Short Time

    By Jim Stanford

    “We are all in this together,” Prime Minister Morrison solemnly intoned to Parliament in April. And during those first frightening weeks of the pandemic, there was a brief moment when it seemed like Australia’s industrial relations protagonists actually believed it. For a short time, businesses, unions, and government put aside their usual differences and worked together to get through this existential threat. For example, they negotiated quick agreements to alter dozens of Modern Awards and enterprise agreements, adjusting rules and rosters to help keep Australians on the job.

    Then, building on that spirit of cooperation, the government kicked off a new process to seek consensus around further improvements to workplace laws. The government abandoned its pre-COVID effort to impose harsh new restrictions on unions. Instead, five tables were established with business, union, and government leaders, debating reforms to improve the fairness and efficiency of the IR system. Some observes even smelled a new era of Accord-making in the wind.

    Well, the Kumbaya moment didn’t last long. Within weeks the parties retreated to their corners and their standard speaking points. No meaningful consensus emerged on any issue from any table. Even tentative proposals – like an idea, supported by unions and the Business Council, to combine fast-track approval of union-negotiated enterprise agreements with greater flexibility in determining their suitability – were shot down in partisan gunfire by the more strident business lobbyists.

    Now, in the absence of consensus, the government has picked up its traditional hymn book and is once again singing the praises of ‘flexibility’ and deunionisation. IR Minister Christian Porter tabled a series of changes in Parliament Wednesday that will further skew the already lopsided balance of power between employers and workers.

    The government didn’t just take business’s side in the debates at those 5 discussion tables: it went even further. One of the biggest changes in the new legislation (suspending rules that prevent enterprise agreements from undercutting the minimum standards of Modern Awards) wasn’t even discussed at the IR tables. This confirms that the IR gloves are off once again.

    If passed in the Senate, Porter’s omnibus bill will reset several aspects of current labour relations:

    Suspending the BOOT: At present, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) must ensure enterprise agreements (EAs) do not undercut minimum standards guaranteed in the Modern Awards. The new legislation instructs the FWC to approve EAs even if they fail this ‘Better Off Overall Test’ (BOOT), so long as the deal is nominally supported by affected workers (more on this below) and deemed to be in the ‘public interest.’ It is important to remember that Australia (unique among industrial countries) allows employers to implement EAs unilaterally, without any involvement by a union. The BOOT is thus necessary to prevent EAs (especially non-union EAs) from undermining workers’ minimum rights. Porter’s suspension of the BOOT is planned for two years. But even if it is restored after that (which is uncertain), EAs negotiated during that window will remain in effect for years afterward. Even after they expire, under Australian law they remain in effect until replaced with new EAs, or terminated by the FWC – neither of which is likely in non-union settings.

    EA Approval Process: Anticipating that non-BOOT-compliant EAs will be actively opposed by unions, Porter’s legislation includes complementary measures aimed at speeding those deals through the FWC. Unions will be restricted from intervening around EAs they were not involved in negotiating – even non-union EAs where no union was involved. And the process must normally be completed within 21 days, thus limiting opportunities for affected workers to learn about and resist sub-Award provisions.

    Defining Casual Work: The growing use of casual labour was a hot topic at the IR reform tables. Porter’s legislation clarifies the definition of casual work in the most expansive way possible: a casual job is any position deemed casual by the employer, and accepted by the worker, for which there is no promise of regular continuing employment. In other words, any job can be casual, so long as workers are desperate enough to accept it. This will foster the further spread of casual labour. Most important, it removes a big potential liability faced by employers as a result of recent court decisions, under which they might have owed back-pay for holidays and sick leave to casual staff who worked regular shifts.

    Casualising Part-Timers: Further casualisation will be attained through new rules regarding rosters and hours for permanent part-time workers. Porter’s bill would extend flexibility provisions originally implemented earlier this year – during that brief moment of pandemic-induced cooperation. The rules allow employers to alter hours for regular part-timers without incurring overtime penalties or other costs (currently required under some Modern Awards). This will allow employers to effectively use part-time workers as yet another form of casual, just-in-time labour.

    Long-Term Project Agreements: Finally, Porter has granted one more big wish from the business list: allowing super-long enterprise agreements at major new projects. Agreements would last for up to eight years, and can be signed, sealed and delivered before any workers start on the job (thus denying them any input into the process). Under the revised BOOT provisions, they could also undercut the minimum standards of the Awards.

    These changes are being advertised as a boost for post-pandemic job-creation, but this claim is hollow. In fact, the changes in part-time and casual rules will actually discourage new hiring: since existing workers can be costlessly flexed in line with employer needs, there is no need to hire anyone else. Weaker BOOT protections will spur a wave of new EAs: most union-free, and aimed at reducing (not raising) compensation and standards. This makes a mockery of the goals of collective bargaining, and grants Australian employers further opportunity to suppress labour costs (already tracking at their slowest pace in postwar history).

    So what do we make of that short-lived spirit of togetherness which purportedly sparked this whole process? In retrospect, it seems to have been just an opportunity for Coalition leaders to pose as visionary statesmen during a time of crisis. Now, mere months later, the government is back to its old script – and the pandemic is just another excuse to scapegoat unions, drive down wages, and fatten business profits.

    The post Porter IR Bill a Wish List for Business appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Feature Interviews: Worker Voice in a Changing World of Work

    Video recordings of the interviews are available here:

    The videos were recorded for a 5-week on-line course Power, Politics and Influence at Work run by the University of Manchester. The Centre’s staff are featured alongside several leading scholars, trade union activists and international agencies such as the ILO/Oxfam.

    Academics and researchers Tony Dundon, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Emma Hughes and Roger Walden designed the course for labour and NGO activists and students interested in labour market equalities, work and employment. Registration is free.

    The post Feature Interviews: Worker Voice in a Changing World of Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Budget’s Illusory Hope for Business-Led Recovery

    Key conclusions of our analysis include:

    • This budget says explicitly that Australia’s economic reconstruction after COVID-19 is to be trusted almost entirely to private business – helped along with generous tax cuts and business subsidies.
    • The need to strengthen public services (like health care, child care, and higher and vocational education) is largely ignored, as is the need to preserve and strengthen income security programs (with the phase-out of JobKeeper and cuts to JobSeeker going ahead).
    • Tax cuts, whether targeted at businesses or high-income households, will have little impact on actual spending and job-creation.
    • The government needs a more forceful, hands-on, and sustained reconstruction plan to ensure that the economy does not get ‘stuck’ in its current state of partial recovery. That needs much more public sector leadership, vision, and funding.
    • The government admits that wage growth is going to get weaker before it gets stronger – but is doing nothing about that critical problem (which will undermine consumer spending far more than tax cuts will stimulate it).

    Download our full review of the 2020-21 budget below.

    The post Budget’s Illusory Hope for Business-Led Recovery appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Pandemic Shows Australia Needs Domestic Manufacturing

    In this commentary, Centre for Future Work Economist Dan Nahum reviews the qualitative reasons why manufacturing retains a special strategic importance to the overall economy, and discusses the potential synergies between the development of sustainable energy resources and a revitalisation of manufacturing.

    Rebooting the Australian Manufacturing Sector in the Era of Coronavirus and Climate Change

    Since the COVID-19 crisis emerged, Australians have been starkly reminded of the importance of being able to manufacture goods domestically. International shortages of, and restrictions on, the export of medical equipment and personal protective equipment have given us all a fright. While thankfully critical shortages have not yet emerged, the crisis has confirmed that being able to domestically produce a full range of essential manufactures is a matter of national wellbeing.

    For many years the conventional economic wisdom was that as a high-wage, resource-rich economy, Australia was unable to competitively manufacture — nor did it need to. Between digging up raw materials and shipping them to Asian trading partners (subsequently paying a premium for reimported manufactures made from those resources) and our pivot to a ‘service economy’, we could somehow sidestep the need to produce what we materially use. Even Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has now conceded that unbalanced strategy is not viable.

    It’s true the extraction of our extraordinary mineral endowment made some Australians wealthy, but in a lopsided way: unbalanced reliance on resource extraction, combined with the long decline of manufacturing, has made Australia far more unequal — indeed, we are now more unequal than most OECD nations. Additionally, this myopic economic focus has put us at the mercy of boom-and-bust cycles in global demand for our resources.

    There are many core reasons why Australia needs a healthy, proportionate manufacturing sector:

    • Australians are buying more manufactured goods over time; and manufacturing output is growing around the world. The absolute decline of manufacturing in Australia is an exception to the experience of other industrialised countries.
    • Manufacturing is the most innovation-intensive sector in the whole economy. No country can be an innovation leader without manufacturing.
    • Manufactured goods account for over two-thirds of world merchandise trade. A country that cannot successfully export manufactures will be shut out of most trade.
    • Production costs in Australia are not expensive relative to other industrial countries (now that the Australian dollar is once again trading in normal range).
    • Even small remote countries (like Korea, Ireland, New Zealand and Israel) are increasing their manufacturing output, and preserving and creating manufacturing jobs. Their experience demonstrates that we cannot blame geographic isolation for our deindustrialisation.
    • Manufacturing anchors hundreds of thousands of other jobs throughout the economy, thanks to its long and complex supply chain. A myriad of supplies and inputs are purchased by manufacturing facilities.

    There’s another key reason to be optimistic about Australian manufacturing — if we create an appropriate policy environment for it. Australia is poised to take advantage of our bountiful renewable energy endowment to reinvigorate manufacturing, on the foundation of plentiful, competitive, and reliable power.

    Read The Centre for Future Work’s report Powering Onwards: Australia’s Opportunity to Reinvigorate Manufacturing through Renewable Energy, which considers the potential and actual connections between renewables and manufacturing in detail.

    The following core policy levers would help to ensure that Australia’s manufacturing sector thrives in decades to come, enhancing our prosperity and our national security:

    Targeted Tax Incentives: No-strings-attached tax cuts for corporations do not stimulate investment, innovation, or employment. Rather, fiscal incentives are more effective when they are linked directly to investment. Examples include accelerated depreciation provisions (allowing companies to write off the cost of new investments faster), investment tax credits, and public co-investments in specific strategic projects.

    Investing Public Funds in Key Industries: International experience confirms that public financial assets can effectively lever greater capital investment in key industries. These include state-owned development banks (as in Japan and Korea) or other forms of sovereign wealth (as in Singapore, the UAE, and Norway). Public investment vehicles have been used successfully — indeed profitably — in numerous applications in Australia (for example, the CEFC to finance sustainable energy projects). The same principles can apply in manufacturing investment. Additionally, industry super funds could play a larger role in financing the development of strategic products and sectors.

    Innovation: Empirical evidence shows successful innovation must be embodied in the hands-on process of ‘learning by doing’. And there is no other sector more directly connected to the innovation process than manufacturing. Government needs to provide tangible, direct support to innovation in manufacturing. We need better systems for linking public innovation activity with commercial applications. And we can emulate successful public equity investments in innovation-intensive businesses in other countries (like the effective methods for financing innovative firms used in Israel, Finland, and Ireland).

    Sector Strategies: Government needs to identify manufacturing sub-sectors with the right criteria for success, and then co-ordinate investment and growth. These sector strategies must engage all relevant sector stakeholders (business, unions, educational institutions, research organisations, state and local governments). Even businesses which compete with each other can benefit when the whole sector succeeds. Criteria for identifying high-potential sectors include innovation, export orientation, productivity, and strong supply chain linkages.

    Networks, Eco-Systems, and Clusters: Successful modern industrial policy relies centrally on connections and collaboration among players from different firms, agencies, and stakeholders. Research shows that spillovers among these diverse sector participants, and the sharing of knowledge between them, are crucial to the development of ‘critical mass’ in any high-tech industry. Often, these networks and clusters are geographically concentrated. Government cannot simply ‘create’ clusters, but it can facilitate their emergence.

    Industrial Infrastructure: Government investments in public capital assets of all kinds will play a crucial role in fostering manufacturing growth. Infrastructure investments help to offset the sustained weakness of private investment, and improve weak macroeconomic conditions. One key focus of infrastructure investment should include facilities and services which support manufacturing: ranging from transportation infrastructure, to utility connections (especially renewable energy), to modern training facilities (to help better integrate TAFE and university training with industry). We should maximise the use of Australian-made manufacturing content in those (and all other) infrastructure projects.

    Connecting Renewable Energy Investment to Manufacturing: Given Australia’s superabundance of renewable resources, Australia should position itself as the world’s renewable energy superpower. Renewable energy is appropriate for most industrial applications, including heavy industry, and now offers lower costs than fossil fuel sources (including gas). To expedite the transition to renewable energy, the manufacturing sector requires stability in energy policy, industrial strategies to take advantage of Australia’s renewable energy endowment, and government partnerships with firms that can benefit from and add value to Australia’s renewable energy endowment.

    Skills and Capacities: Enhancing the future skills and capacities of workers must be a vital component of future sector strategies. Consistent funding for skills training at all levels is essential, as are efforts to more closely link training programs with future workforce needs in strategic sectors. Germany’s apprenticeship system is perhaps the most outstanding international role model in this area.

    Leveraging Procurement: Australian governments are massive purchasers of manufactured goods. An obvious way to support domestic manufacturing is to ensure those expenditures generate the maximum possible boost to domestic industry. This also helps to reduce the final net cost of the program: since the government collects additional revenues through the new work spurred by domestic procurement decisions, offsetting the public expenditure. Other countries regularly utilise domestic content targets in procurement to support domestic producers. Australia can do the same.

    Trade that Goes Both Ways: International trade is essential to the viability of most manufacturing due to the importance of economies of scale in production. Australian trade negotiators need to do far more than mutual tariff reduction to stimulate Australian manufactured exports. And Australian agencies (like Austrade) can be much more proactive in promoting Australia’s exports, through initiatives like expanded credit financing, initiatives to leverage Australian participation in global supply chains, and government support for international marketing.

    A thriving manufacturing sector confers important benefits across the whole economy. Even more importantly, a large and adaptable manufacturing sector offers resilience against periodic crises such as COVID-19. If Australia does not add value through the expansion of our manufacturing sectors, we can anticipate that our relative standard of living will decline, and our vulnerability to future supply disruptions and health crises will only increase. We can and must build a manufacturing sector that is economically and ecologically sustainable, and that adds complexity and resilience to Australia’s economy.

    See the Centre for Future Work’s previous research on the Australian manufacturing sector:

    Manufacturing Still Matters (2016) shows that manufacturing, far from being inherently doomed in Australia, is quite viable. Similar countries manufacture successfully. It provides an agenda of policy recommendations for support of the sector.

    Manufacturing: A Moment of Opportunity (2017) demonstrates that while the Australian public underestimate the size and therefore strategic economic importance of the sector, it enjoys strong popular support. Furthermore, the report identifies some promising signs of future growth in the sector.

    From Consensus to Action: Report from the First National Manufacturing Summit (2018) summarises the key findings of the first National Manufacturing Summit, including areas of strong policy consensus reached among the business, industry peak bodies, trade unions, government departments, academic institutions and vocational training providers and other summit delegates. The report also identifies several priorities for further policy research.

    Advanced Skills for Advanced Manufacturing (2018) argues that Australia’s present vocational education and training system, damaged by years of underfunding and failed policy experimentation, is a weak link in meeting the needs of the industry. High-skilled, high-paid jobs rely on a strong VET sector, and this report identifies twelve key reforms to achieve that.

    Auto Shutdown Another Economic Blow (2016) analyses the causes and impacts of the closure of the Australian car manufacturing industry. It notes that secondary job losses will be several times larger than the direct jobs eliminated at the car plants.

    Penny Wise and Pound Foolish (2016) analyses the impact of the NSW government’s decision to source railroad rolling stock manufacturing work to Korea rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to procure domestically. Governments need to account for the full range of potential costs and benefits of their procurement decisions (job creation, industry development, government revenues, and so on), not simply minimise the up-front purchase cost.

    The post Pandemic Shows Australia Needs Domestic Manufacturing appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Webinar: Protecting Jobs and Incomes During the Pandemic

    Jim titled his presentation “Off the Cliff”, highlighting that the immediate shutdown of so much of Australia’s work and production is producing an economic contraction unlike anything experienced in history.

    Comparing Recessions

    Watch a video recording of the webinar:

    And/or download Jim’s slides below.

    This webinar was part of the Australia Institute’s weekly pandemic webinar series.

    The post Webinar: Protecting Jobs and Incomes During the Pandemic appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Open Letter From Economists and Policy Experts: Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During Pandemic

    The letter and the full list of signatories is reprinted below. It has been forwarded to Prime Minister Morrison.

    Public Statement from Economists and Public Policy Experts:

    A Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During the Coronavirus Shutdown

    The unprecedented public health measures required to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic are causing a dramatic shutdown of work and production in several key sectors of Australia’s economy. Immediate full or partial closures of activity are occurring in several consumer-facing industries (such as hospitality, retail, airlines, recreation and personal services). But before long, spillover losses will be experienced in other sectors, too: including wholesale trade and logistics, manufacturing, business services, education, and others. Consumer and business confidence has been deeply shocked, and that will magnify the negative economic effects of the pandemic.

    The coming recession will be unprecedented in Australian history – in both its speed and its depth. Without immediate action, we expect that 1-2 million workers, or even more, could lose their jobs in coming weeks. That would drive unemployment to 15% or higher, overwhelm income support programs, and leave hundreds of thousands of businesses unable to function – even after the immediate health danger passes.

    This is a dangerous and dramatic moment in Australia’s economic history. It is imperative that the federal and state governments act immediately and powerfully to protect Australian workers and businesses from the worst of the coming downturn. Important steps have been taken to expand access and benefit levels for income support payments to Australian workers (including casuals, contractors, and gig workers) losing work because of the pandemic. This is a helpful, but on its own inadequate, response. Government must also act forcefully to prevent mass job losses in coming weeks – not just provide support to those who do lose work.

    In this regard, we recommend that the Commonwealth government immediately implement a large-scale wage subsidy scheme, similar to those already enacted in several other industrial countries (including, variously, the UK, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Ireland). Under these programs, government directly pays to employers (for a limited period of time) a majority portion of wages (between 70 and 90%) to cover the wages of workers who would otherwise be stood down from their positions. The measure can apply to non-standard workers (including contractors and self-employed). It can also be integrated with measures to support short time working as an alternative to complete redundancy. The wage subsidy is paid to firms experiencing severe losses of revenue and business (beyond a specified threshold). It would cover most of the wage bills for workers who can no longer work for economic reasons, up to a specified ceiling (perhaps the level of full-time median earnings). This program will be expensive – but governments everywhere have recognised that this unprecedented crisis requires them to do everything in their power to protect people, jobs, communities and the economy.

    To date, Australia’s response to the pandemic has been uncertain, inconsistent and inadequate. Immediate, powerful action to keep millions of Australians in their jobs, instead of pushing them into an overloaded and complex Centrelink system, would significantly ease the pandemic’s painful economic effects. It would underpin financial stability for millions of households through the coming terrible weeks or months. And it would preserve the viability of hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses, allowing them to resume work and production as soon as the health restrictions are eased.

    We the undersigned support the proposal for a strong wage subsidy program to keep workers in employment through the coming downturn, and we urge the Commonwealth government to implement such a policy quickly.

    Download full list of signatories below.

    The post Open Letter From Economists and Policy Experts: Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During Pandemic appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Responding to the Economic Emergency

    That’s the core message of new analysis by Centre for Future Work Director Dr. Jim Stanford, published today by the Australian journal New Matilda.

    Stanford’s article outlines the immediate economic measures needed to both confront the health emergency and prevent households and firms from collapsing:

    • Immediate mobilization of resources to protect health: including more staff at health facilities, quick deployment of off-site and mobile testing capacities, home support for people quarantined or recovering, and quick expansion of equipment and facilities where possible.
    • Income protection for workers: including for casuals, self-employed, gig-workers, and many part-timers who don’t have effective access to sick pay. Incomes must be protected for all workers (regardless of employment status), through mandated special payments (as proposed by the ACTU).
    • Other direct income supplements: similar to the one-time payments distributed in 2009, as well as more targeted aid (like higher Newstart).
    • Debt relief and business assistance: emergency financing will be needed to keep firms viable in many industries (including airlines, other transportation, tourism, and hospitality). Other parts of society also need protection from creditors; foreclosures and evictions should be prohibited, and other personal and credit card debts deferred.

    But Stanford also discusses the longer-run challenge that will face the Australian economy: the pandemic is imposing a shock that is far too powerful and all-encompassing for private market players to autonomously recover from. The economy will need unprecedented and lasting investments by government to repair and expand public infrastructure and services, and directly put Australians back to work:

    “There is enormous need for urgent rebuilding required in our economy and our communities. Repairing and strengthening health care infrastructure comes first, but other priorities, too, are urgent: like sustainable transit, green energy, non-market housing, aged care and early child education. The case for mobilising resources under the leadership of governments and public institutions, and employing millions of Australians to do that work, is compelling. We can repair the damage of this crisis (and better prepare for the next one), deliver valuable services, and create millions of jobs. All we need is the willingness to imagine a different model of organizing and leading economic activity.”

    Please read the full article, We Need Wage Guarantees And Radical Restructure, Not More ‘Stimulus’, published by New Matilda.

    The post Responding to the Economic Emergency appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Gender Inequality in Australia’s Labour Market: A Factbook

    The factbook compiles evidence on over 60 different statistical indicators of gender inequality in Australia, organised into 18 different subject groupings. It paints a composite picture of how women are blocked from full participation in work and economic activity, experience greater precarity in employment, are paid less for their efforts, and experience other forms of exploitation (including violence and sexual assault in workplaces).

    Some of its more startling findings include:

    • The true wage gap between women and men is much larger than often reported. The commonly-cited gender wage gap of 14% only applies to women working in full-time positions, and excludes bonuses and overtime payments. However, women have less access to full-time jobs, and receive far less bonus and supplementary income than men. The gender gap in total wage income is 32% – more than twice as wide.
    • Women are much more subject to precarious and insecure work arrangements than men. They are far more likely to be employed in part-time, casual, and temporary positions than men. Only 43% of employed Australian women work in a traditional full-time permanent job with normal entitlements (such as paid sick leave, holidays, and superannuation). The rest all experience one or more dimensions of precarity in their jobs. That compares to 57% of men in permanent full-time jobs with entitlements.
    • Women who undertake self-employment are especially vulnerable. The report shows that 47% of self-employed women are in vulnerable business positions: working part-time, and working either without incorporation or without any other employees (or both). That compares to 19.% of self-employed men.
    • Women are now more likely to be members of a union than men, and make up more than half of union members. Women who are in a union earn 29% more per week than women who are not in a union. For part-time workers, the union advantage is even bigger: women union members earn 44% more than non-members

    “The statistical evidence is overwhelming that women are a long way from achieving equality in Australia’s workplaces,” said Alison Pennington, Senior Economist at the Centre for Future Work and co-author of the factbook.

    “These systemic and structural barriers to full participation and fair compensation are holding Australian women back and our economy is weaker for it.

    “Australian women need to be able to work and earn to their full potential. This requires powerful measures to support women workers in all aspects of their lives; from quality affordable childcare to much stronger protections against violence and sexual harassment.”

    The post Gender Inequality in Australia’s Labour Market: A Factbook appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

    Stanford highlights seven ways in which the nature of work and employment is demonstrating a fundamental continuity, despite changes in technology and work organisation: ranging from the predominance of wage labour in the economy, to employers’ continuing interest in extracting maximum labour effort for the least possible labour cost.

    “I have started to conclude there is more constancy than change in the world of work. In particular, the central power relationships that shape employment in a capitalist economy are not fundamentally changing: to the contrary, they are being reinforced… As a result, I suspect the future of work will look a lot like its past, at least as it has existed over the past two centuries. Where work is concerned, it is truly a case of ‘back to the future.’”

    Stanford rejects the common assumption that changes in employment relationships (such as the rise of “gig” jobs, and other forms of precarious work) are driven primarily by technology–stressing instead the importance of discrete choices within enterprises and society as a whole about what kinds of technology are developed, and how they are implemented. Improvements in work are certainly possible, but only when workers are able to exert active, organised pressure on employers and governments.

    Please read Stanford’s full commentary, Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss (‘Who’ soundtrack optional!).

    The post Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Seminar Presentation: Superannuation & Wages in Australia

    Watch a summary version of his talk below.

    The full paper is posted at: The Relationship Between Superannuation Contributions and Wages in Australia.

    The post Seminar Presentation: Superannuation & Wages in Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.