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  • The great (gendered) resignation is not what you think. It’s worse

    Have you heard? The so-called great resignation is afoot. A world where an empowered workforce say “no” to bad bosses and a life dictated by work. In the US, increased job departures have been coined a “revolution in workers’ expectations”.

    Australian workers were squeezed for an average 6.1 hours unpaid overtime per week in 2021 – a substantial increase on 2020. If only expectations matched reality.

    In Australia, employers crow about shortages in low-paid, “churn and burn” jobs of which they refuse to improve the quality. Meanwhile, 700,000 people are unemployed, and 1.3 million are in jobs, but need more work. Around 1 million more aren’t looking for work, but want to work and are available. The ABS calls them “marginally attached” and “discouraged” workers.

    Women know a thing or two about being discouraged. Far from quitting as an act of righteous agency, they’ve lost their jobs during lockdowns against their will. It’s material. Less “life’s too short to work 24/7”. More “my kids need care immediately”.

    The explosion in caring demands associated with lockdowns fell disproportionately to women – as in 2020, when women’s average hours caring for children and performing household tasks rose faster than for men, reaching 5.1 hours per day (versus 3.1 for men).

    In February 2021, 175,000 women didn’t look for work even though they were available and ready to start within four weeks because they had pressing caring responsibilities.

    Even if women loaded with caring demands wanted to retain their jobs, the odds were stacked against them. They hold the majority of low-hours insecure jobs without protections against sacking. When bosses want to shed jobs to save bottom lines, women cop it worst.

    68% of all jobs lost between May and October were held by women (205,000 jobs). Women’s participation in the job market fell 1.7 percentage points. Nearly all (90%) of women’s jobs lost were part-time.

    Little acknowledged, the latest job vacancies data mirror women’s exodus from paid work. In August, vacancies were highest in healthcare, administration and retail. These are all industries employing 50% or more women. All are in the bottom-half of industries by average weekly earnings.

    The question is, as wallets open, beers flow and economic activity resumes, what’s bringing women back to work? A couple shifts at minimum wage, and higher COVID-19 contagion risks to boot. All to pay for one day of high-cost childcare? Hardly appealing.

    An empowered workforce can walk away from bad jobs. But structural barriers stop women from participating in the first place.

    High-cost childcare is a clear barrier for women workers. Before the pandemic, over half of non-employed women with young children said high-cost childcare was the biggest influence on their decision not to work.

    Australia’s outdated paid parental scheme bakes “primary” and “secondary” carers into family structures – reinforcing the exodus of women from work, and blocking the equal participation of fathers in raising their children.

    The so-called great resignation is gendered. But women shouldn’t have to resign themselves to the revolving door of crap jobs and important caring responsibilities.

    We’ve come a long way since the 1950s when conservative norms dictated women’s labour should be unpaid and confined to the home. Women have better access to the world of paid work now. But their relegation to insecure, low-paid, and junior roles shows we have much further to go.

    And it’s government policies that holds us back.

    Australian women need genuine measures to support them in all aspects of their lives; from free early childhood care and education, better work-family balance policies, pay equity, and more opportunities for decent jobs.

    Only then, can women imagine a world where they are empowered through work.

    The post The great (gendered) resignation is not what you think. It’s worse appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • International COVID-19 Income Supports: An Update

    In several countries, governments with stronger commitments to public health and safety, and a more inclusive and equitable recovery from COVID-19, have been more cautious and incremental in scaling back government interventions. Some have also made permanent improvements to income security and other policies whose shortcomings became more apparent during the pandemic. In Australia, however, the phase-out of COVID-19 wage subsidies and income supports was accelerated and premature – perhaps more so than any other major industrial country. A new comparison of COVID support policies across numerous industrial countries confirms the economic and public health risks of the rapid elimination of Australia’s COVID programs.

    This briefing paper, prepared by Alison Pennington and Jim Stanford, catalogues a selection of international income support measures introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and reports on recent changes in those programs as vaccinations roll out and economies have re-opened. This catalogue allows us to make a comparative assessment of the level and coverage of Australia’s provisions, in relation to other jurisdictions.

    After summarising the status of Australia’s Commonwealth-administered COVID-era payments, other countries are surveyed, organised into two groups: those with income support programs still in place, and those whose programs had been eliminated at time of writing. A conclusion summarises the comparison, which confirms that Australia has been an outlier among industrial countries in the speed with which emergency COVID-19 measures were eliminated.

    The post International COVID-19 Income Supports: An Update appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Working From Home, or Living at Work? (GHOTD 2021)

    2021 marks the thirteenth annual Go Home on Time Day (GHOTD), an initiative of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute that shines a spotlight on overwork among Australians, including excessive overtime that is often unpaid.

    Last year’s report emphasised that 2020 had been extraordinary and difficult, and 2021 has brought little reprieve. Australia remains caught in ongoing and interacting twin crises: a public health crisis and an economic crisis. Each influences and reinforces the other.

    Around a third of employed Australians continue to perform at least some of their work from home. As a result, the standard scenario of workers ‘staying late at the workplace’, which largely framed our analysis of excessive work time before the pandemic, is now supplemented by a different dimension of excessive work and unpaid overtime. Now we must consider whether home work will become the “new normal” for many workers even after the acute phase of the pandemic finally passes – and what new pressures on working hours, work-life balance, and unpaid overtime are unleashed by the work-from-home phenomenon.

    Whether working from home or at a formal workplace, the problem of unpaid overtime (whereby workers are not paid for a significant portion of their work) continues to be severe. In fact, the estimated incidence of this ‘time theft’ has increased substantially compared with 2020. In many cases, people’s responsibilities in their home lives have increased in response to the health and social crisis, accentuating a double burden of unpaid work – one that is experienced disproportionately by women.

    Since 2009, the Centre for Future Work and the Australia Institute have commissioned an annual survey to investigate overwork and unpaid overtime in Australia. This year’s poll of 1604 Australians was conducted between 24 and 27 August, with a sample that was nationally representative according to gender, age and state or territory. Of the 1604 respondents, 1048 (or 65%) were currently in paid work.

    Our survey asked respondents about unpaid hours of work, preferences for more or fewer hours, family and caring responsibilities, and the balance between work and non-work life during COVID-19. This year’s survey also asked about electronic surveillance practices implemented by employers to monitor those working from home, and what workers thought about returning to the on-site workplace as the COVID-19 pandemic abates.

    This report summarises the results of that polling, and places it in the context of national labour force trends.

    The post Working From Home, or Living at Work? appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Eight free weeks: Time stolen from employees skyrockets during COVID

    The number of hours stolen from Australians by employers has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the average employee now providing eight full-time weeks of free work per year.

    17 November 2021 marks Go Home on Time Day, run by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, and now in its thirteenth year.

    Key findings from this year’s Go Home on Time Day report:

    • The average employed Australian is performing 6.13 hours of unpaid work each week in 2021, up from 5.25 in 2020, and 4.62 in 2019.
    • That time theft equates to 319 hours per year, or over eight standard 38-hour work weeks per worker.
    • This unpaid overtime represents the loss of $125 billion in income from Australian workers in the past year, or $461.60 per worker every fortnight.
    • COVID-19 appears to have accelerated Australia’s time theft crisis, with 26% of workers reporting their employers’ expectations of their availability increased during the pandemic.
    • Amidst the growth in working from home during COVID, employers are using new technologies to pressure and monitor employees. 39% of workers report their employers are remotely monitoring them through technology like webcams and keystroke counters.
    • Young workers aged 18-29 performed the most unpaid overtime (8.17 hours per week)

    “This year Australian workers are taking home a smaller share of GDP than we have ever seen before. Yet, time-theft is rife and bosses are stealing record amounts of unpaid time from workers,” said Dan Nahum, economist at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “Arriving at work early, staying late, working through breaks, working nights and weekends, taking calls or emails out of hours – there are a host of ways employers steal time from their employees, and we see them all being used prodigiously.

    “COVID-19 has made the situation worse, indicating work-from-home does not necessarily improve work life in favour of employees. Instead we’re seeing further incursion of work into people’s personal time and their privacy. In many cases it’s making it easier for employers to undercut Australian minimum standards around hours, overtime, and penalty rates.

    “Alarmingly work-from-home arrangements have been accompanied by innovative surveillance methods, with 39 per cent of employees saying their employers remotely monitor their activity and a further 17 per cent unsure whether they were being electronically monitored or not. When one in three workers say they are being monitored via webcam and 30 per cent say their every keystroke is being recorded, it’s clear our industrial laws are not keeping pace with tech.

    “If Australians want to stop this alarming theft of billions of hours of time, and hundreds of billions of dollars of income, policymakers need to strengthen workers’ power to demand reasonable, stable hours of limit, and fair payment for every hour they work. This is all the more important with so many Australians working from their own homes.”

    Mr Nahum said it was an injustice that many Australians report being eager for more paid hours while contributing free ones to their boss.

    “Half the part-time and casual workers in this country report they are keen for more paid hours, yet the average part-timer is giving away over 4.5 hours a week and the average casual just over 5 hours,” Mr Nahum said.

    “These are worker efforts that should end up as wages in someone’s pocket, not a boost to a profit column.”

    The post Eight free weeks: Time stolen from employees skyrockets during COVID appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Ideas Into Motion: Progressive Economics and Social Change

    Our Director, Dr. Jim Stanford, was recently asked to contribute his ideas on the links between progressive economics and real-world social change movements for a forthcoming collection: The Handbook of Alternative Theories of Political Economy, edited by Frank Stilwell, Tim Thornton, and David Primrose, forthcoming in 2022 from Edward Elgar Press in the UK.

    In the essay, Jim reflects on his own experiences trying to integrate progressive economic theorising and research with on-the-ground campaigns for economic, social, and environmental justice. While there is a natural synergy between progressive economics and social change organising, there are also challenges and barriers to more effective partnership between these two worlds. The essay proposes several ‘best practices’ that both researchers and activists can consider as they try to forge stronger cooperation.

    The post Ideas Into Motion appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • 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.

  • The Future of Work in Journalism

    The new report, The Future of Work in Journalism, was written by Dr. Jim Stanford with the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute. It catalogues the employment and economic damage wrought in media and information industries by the combination of technological change, new business models, and globalisation.

    “It is ironic that we supposedly live in an ‘information economy,’ but Australia’s capacity to contribute fully and successfully to that information era is crumbling due to financial losses and massive job destruction,” Stanford said.

    Major findings of the report include:

    • 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.
    • 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 part-time, and a growing share 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.

    “Workers in these industries are producing more with less, despite the turmoil of technological change, job losses, and restructuring,” Stanford said. “But that extraordinary effort is not translating into more secure or better paid jobs – quite the contrary.”

    The report argues that quality journalism is a ‘public good’ in a modern democracy, because of its importance in distributing reliable information (including on emergencies, like the pandemic) to citizens. The failure of private markets to sustainably supply this service (due to corporate concentration, unrestrained ‘free riding’ on content produced by other, and globalisation) necessitates public policy action to stabilise the industry and support continued journalism.

    The report makes several suggestions for policy measures to sustain journalism despite those market failures, including publicly-funded journalism, stronger property rights for content-creators, tax reforms, stronger anti-trust regulations (on major digital monopolies like Google and Facebook), and stronger support for training and vocational education in the sector.

    The report was commissioned by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union representing journalists and other media workers. Marcus Strom, the MEAA’s Media Federal President, said: “The report makes it clear that years of disruption, undermining and neglect have left Australian journalism and journalists in a fragile state.”

    Strom urged the Commonwealth government to step up its support for domestic journalism. ““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 we want that to continue, then there is no time to waste to address the many challenges facing those working in journalism and the entire media industry.”

    The post The Future of Work in Journalism 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.

  • Shock Troops of the Pandemic: Casual and Insecure Work in COVID

    New research 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 second wave of closures.

    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. And part-timers have been 4.5 times more likely to lose work than full-timers.

    “Workers in insecure jobs have been the shock troops of the pandemic,” said Jim Stanford, Economist with the Centre for Future Work and author of the report. “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.”

    The post Shock Troops of the Pandemic 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.