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  • Young Workers are Shock Troops of Precarious Labour Market

    The National Youth Commission into Youth Employment and Transitions has been holding an inquiry in communities across Australia to document the situation of young workers, who are experiencing much lower rates of employment and income than other workers.

    Stanford’s submission argued that young workers are like the “shock troops” of the precarious labour market: the ones sent in first to confront an especially dangerous situation. The rise of precarious work in all its forms – part-time work, casual jobs, labour hire, temporary positions, marginal self-employment, and digitally mediated ‘gigs’ – now dominates youth employment patterns. And that situation will not automatically disappear as young workers get older and gain experience. Rather, evidence suggests that without policy measures to stabilise and improve jobs, this will be a permanent shift that gradually affects most workers. Already, less than half of employed Australians are working in a ‘traditional’ full-time permanent wages jobs with normal entitlements (like paid holidays, sick leave, and superannuation). For young workers, that ratio is less than one in five.

    Stanford argued for targeted measures to stimulate more youth hiring into stable positions, an ambitious effort to rebuild vocational education in Australia and strengthen pipelines to post-education jobs, and a broader commitment to full-employment macroeconomic policy.

    The post Young Workers are “Shock Troops” of Precarious Labour Market appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Precarity and Job Instability on the Frontlines of NDIS Support Work

    In this new report, researchers document the experience of front-line disability service workers under the NDIS based on first-hand qualitative interviews.

    The report was a joint initiative of two leading academic researchers (Prof. Donna Baines, formerly of the University of Sydney, and Dr. Fiona Macdonald of RMIT) and the Centre for Future Work. Researchers conducted detailed face-to-face interviews with 19 front-line disability service workers, mostly in the Newcastle, NSW region. (Newcastle was one of the locations chosen for NDIS trials, so workers in the region have more experience with the reality of NDIS delivery problems.)

    The interviews indicated 8 major problems negatively affecting the stability, quality and sustainability of work for disability support workers:

    1. The new system is not providing sufficient support for participants with intellectual and other cognitive disabilities, including in designing and managing individual programs of care;
    2. DSWs are experiencing increased instability and precarity in their jobs, elevated levels of mental and physical stress, and irregular hours and incomes;
    3. New workers joining the disability services sector are often less skilled, less trained, less experienced, and sometimes reluctant;
    4. DSWs experience particular challenges working in the private realm of NDIS clients’ homes;
    5. The informal and inconsistent provision of transportation and other necessary functions to NDIS clients results in a significant shift of costs and risks to workers;
    6. DSWs are experiencing increased levels of violence in their work;
    7. Relationships with managers have changed dramatically under the new system, undermining effective supervision, coaching, and training; and
    8. Worker turnover, given the insecurity of work and income and the challenging conditions of work, is extreme.

    The deterioration in job stability and working conditions under the NDIS will inevitably impact on the quality of service experienced by NDIS clients; it will also exacerbate the overarching challenge of recruitment and retention facing disability service providers as they try to attract the 80,000 new full-time equivalent workers required to operate the scaled-up NDIS.

    The researchers conclude with several policy recommendations to improve the quality and stability of work for disability support workers, and the quality of care for participants.

    The post Precarity and Job Instability on the Frontlines of NDIS Support Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • The Future of Work for Australian Graduates

    The world of work is being transformed by a complex and interdependent set of forces – including technology, changes in workplace organisation and employment relationships, environmental and demographic challenges, and more. No group of workers will confront the reality of constant change more directly than young workers. As new entrants to the labour market, they cannot count on the protection of previous structures or practices to insulate them from coming changes. They immediately face the challenges of an increasingly precarious job market – one in which less than half of all employed Australians now fill a traditional “standard” job (full-time, permanent, paid work offering normal entitlements like paid leave and superannuation).

    Holding a university degree is still a vital and valuable asset for young workers entering this challenging and unstable milieu for the first time. Individuals with university degrees are more likely to be employed, to have more stable jobs, and to be paid more. But despite this relative advantage enjoyed by university graduates, employment conditions have become much more challenging even for graduates. Rates of graduate employment in full-time work are down significantly over the past decade, and there is evidence of a growing mismatch and underutilisation of university graduates in positions that do not fully or even partly utilise their hard-won knowledge and skills. At the same time, employer complaints about supposed skills shortages and the dearth of “job-ready” graduates are as loud as ever; the report documents that those complaints need to be interpreted with considerable scepticism.

    Australia’s higher education system could do a much better job at anticipating the needs for highly-skilled workers in the future, evolving their program offerings in light of those needs, and then assisting students as they traverse their university educations and find meaningful, relevant work.

    This comprehensive new report from the Centre for Future Work, developed in conjunction with Graduate Careers Australia (an association that has worked to gather data and make recommendations regarding university graduate employment issues) provides an overview of the prospects and challenges faced by future university graduates. The report confirms that university education makes a vital, essential, and valuable contribution to Australians’ prosperity: both at an individual level for those who have attained higher education, and at the macroeconomic and social level. But it catalogues gaps and failures in crucial education-to-jobs transitions, considers the most likely factors contributing to those gaps and failures (while dispensing with some commonly-cited but unconvincing myths and stereotypes), and makes several concrete recommendations for policy change and innovation.

    Key findings of the report include:

    • Employment outcomes for university graduates have deteriorated notably since the GFC. Full-time work placements have deteriorated (from 85% in 2008 to 73% in 2018, measured by full-time employment 4 months after graduation). Many graduates report being underemployed: both quantitatively (working fewer hours than they want) and qualitatively (in jobs that do not fully or even partially use their hard-won expensive skills), and insecure work has become a big problem for graduates (like for others in the labour market).
    • Employers continue to complain about pressing “skills shortages” hampering their growth opportunities. But careful empirical data suggests this claim is questionable. Reported skills shortages in most occupations have in fact eased considerably since the GFC.
    • Another stereotype not backed up by hard data is the common assumption that STEM and technical skills are in the most short supply, and that STEM graduates will have the best employment outcomes. For example, math grads have one of the worst full-time employment placement rates of any discipline. Employers report they especially seek applicants with verbal, social, problem-solving, and communication skills.
    • Vocational degrees (tied to specific occupations, often regulated – like health care, engineering or teaching) have the best employment placement rates.
    • Therefore, the solution to graduate employment challenges must include better strategies for directly linking degrees to jobs: for example, through paid placements, occupational licensing, and accreditation.
    • Australia’s system for planning skills / higher education / job placement functions is fragmented, and often contradictory. We could learn a lot from other countries (especially in Europe) which have taken a more hands-on and direct approach to forecasting future skill requirements, planning higher education offerings accordingly, and channeling graduates directly into relevant career opportunities.
    • The report makes 9 specific recommendations to improve university-to-work transitions for future graduates, including establishing a national higher education planning capacity, and creating a timely and high-quality labour force information system.
    • An overarching recommendation in the report is a call for a new social compact for universities as major actors in Australia’s skills system. This includes increased public funding for universities attached to requirements for national policy coordination among universities, expanded employment-to-jobs programming, and stronger mechanisms connecting public research to the development of an innovation-intensive, high-value export-oriented industry policy.

    Download the full report, The Future of Work for Australian Graduates: The Changing Landscape of University-Employment Transitions in Australia, by Alison Pennington and Dr. Jim Stanford. There is also a 12-page summary report available for download. The report was commissioned by Graduate Careers Australia.

    The post The Future of Work for Australian Graduates appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • University-to-Job Pathways Key to Boosting Graduate Employment Outcomes

    New research shows active strategies to directly link university degrees to a job are needed, to better support university graduates as they negotiate a rapidly changing labour market.

    The report, by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, shows that employment outcomes for university graduates have deteriorated significantly since the Global Financial Crisis, with only 73% of recent university graduates finding full-time employment within 4 months of graduating – down from 85% in 2008.

    Key Findings:

    • At the individual level, a university degree is still very valuable: people who hold a university degree are more likely to be employed, more likely to be employed in a stable job, and earn higher average wages and salaries. Half of new jobs created in the coming 5 years will require a degree.
    • However, many recent graduates report being underemployed or in insecure jobs that do not utilise their specific skills—including graduates who studied technical skills or STEM subjects.
    • The report makes 9 recommendations to improve university-to-work transitions for future graduates, including establishing a national higher education planning capacity, and creating a timely and high-quality labour force information system.

    Alison Pennington, Senior Economist, Centre for Future Work:
    “Employment outcomes for university graduates have deteriorated significantly since the GFC,” says Alison Pennington, Senior Economist at the Centre for Future Work and co-author of the report.

    “Finishing tertiary education and finding a job in your field is a difficult and haphazard experience, which is leaving many graduates in jobs that do not fully, or even partially, use their hard-won and expensively acquired skills.

    “Vocational degrees, which are tied to specific occupations like health care, engineering or teaching, have the best employment placement rates. As seen in these professions, directly linking degrees to jobs through paid placements, occupational licensing and accreditation would greatly improve the situation of graduates.

    “A hands-on and direct approach that channels graduates directly into relevant career opportunities is needed. Australia could learn a lot from other countries, especially in Europe, where this is already being achieved through forecasting future skill requirements and planning higher education offerings accordingly.”

    Noel Edge, Executive Director of Graduate Careers Australia:
    “The overwhelming message from this report by the Centre for Future Work is the need for further research in graduate employment,” says Noel Edge, Executive Director of Graduate Careers Australia.

    “Research to explore the emerging work environment for tertiary education students in Australia, beyond basic government labour-market forecasting and graduate outcomes reporting, simply does not exist.”

    The report was commissioned by Graduate Careers Australia.

    The post University-to-Job Pathways Key to Boosting Graduate Employment Outcomes appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Five Contrarian Insights on the Future of Work

    1. Work is not disappearing; it can’t.
    2. Technology is not accelerating.
    3. “Gigs” aren’t even new.
    4. Technology is often more about relationships than productivity.
    5. Skills are not a magic bullet.

    The commentary was prepared for the My Labour, Our Future conference held last month in Montreal, Canada to mark the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the International Labour Organization. We thank the organizers and the Atkinson Foundation for permission to repost the paper.

    The post Five Contrarian Insights on the Future of Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Job Opportunity: Research Economist

    The successful candidate will offer:

    • A graduate degree in economics or a closely related discipline.
    • Knowledge of and experience with a wide range of labour issues, preferably including: labour market statistics and trends; characteristics and determinants of employment; industrial relations and collective bargaining; wage determination and inequality; gender, racial, and demographic aspects of labour markets; the impact of technology on employment; macroeconomic policy and labour markets; and others.
    • Demonstrated ability to write to deadline for professional and popular audiences in a credible, succinct, and accessible manner.
    • Strong quantitative skills, including ability to access statistical data, analyse it (including familiarity with statistical tools), and report it in a variety of textual, tabular and graphical formats.
    • Confident communication skills, including ability to speak to public audiences, classrooms, and the media.
    • Ability to work collegially with other members of a research team.
    • Commitment to a progressive vision of work and fairness, including the goals of equality, participation, collective representation and trade unionism.

    Responsibilities of the position will include:

    • Research and completion of several project-length research papers, briefing notes, and shorter commentary articles per year on a range of topics related to labour markets and labour market policy.
    • Ongoing monitoring and analysis of labour market data and information.
    • Helping to maintain relevant websites and databases.
    • Public speaking, presentations, lectures and courses, media interviews, and related communication and educational activities.
    • Minimal office and administrative functions.

    Ability to undertake occasional out-of-town travel (including overnight travel) is essential, as is ability to successfully work in a self-managed and autonomous manner.

    The position will be offered on a one-year term-limited basis, with possibility for renewal. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

    Applications are especially invited from women, indigenous persons, other racial and linguistic communities, people with disabilities, and other marginalised communities.

    Please forward applications (including contact information, qualifications, experience, two samples of written work, and names and contact details for two references) in confidence to cfwjob@tai.org.au. Please cite “Economist Job Application” in the subject field of your message; supporting documents should be attached in pdf format. Receipt of applications will be acknowledged by e-mail. Only candidates selected for an interview will then be contacted; no phone calls please.

    Applications must be received by 5:00 pm AEDT on Wednesday 9 October, and interviews will be conducted in Sydney on Wednesday 23 October 2019.

    The Centre for Future Work is an initiative of the Australia Institute, Australia’s leading progressive research institution. Thank you for your interest in the Centre for Future Work.

    The post Job Opportunity: Research Economist appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Paid Parental Leave for Fathers Advances Parental Equality

    In this commentary, Centre for Future Work Economist Alison Pennington reports on a timely roundtable discussion held with work/care policy experts on Iceland’s “father’s quota” parental leave system, and the future for paid parental leave in Australia – co-hosted with the Nordic Policy Centre.

    Research presented by leading Icelandic academic Dr. Ásdís Aðalbjörg Arnalds on the day shows that paid parental leave for both parents at wage replacement levels is key to building more equal workplaces, families and communities, and a modern dual work/care model.

    The post Paid Parental Leave for Fathers Advances Parental Equality appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Stuck-in-the-Mud Workers Not to Blame for Wage Stagnation

    In this commentary, which originally appeared in 10 Daily, Dr Jim Stanford argues that Treasury has mis-identified the true source of the problem. With so few decent job opportunities available, it’s rational that many workers would choose to stick with their current jobs – despite stagnant wages and poor conditions.

    When in Doubt, Blame the Workers

    Blaming the victim is a long and dishonourable tradition in labour policy debate. Unemployed workers on the dole for months at a time? Clearly they aren’t looking hard enough for work. Low-wage workers stuck in dead-end jobs? Clearly they didn’t invest in their own “human capital.” Young workers facing a never-ending series of gigs? Clearly they don’t have the discipline to stick with a real job.

    A new highwater mark in this lamentable practice was surely set this week with a research paper from the Commonwealth Treasury. The report examined historically weak growth in Australian wages over the last several years. It proposed a novel but far-fetched explanation: workers are failing to leave their existing jobs to seek out better-paying opportunities elsewhere. This stick-in-the-mud attitude explains why wages aren’t growing.

    The formal paper contained all sorts of statistical cautions and academic nuances. But that was lost on the legion of gleeful pundits who seized on its findings, pointing their accusing fingers at complacent, “stubborn” workers for their own low wages. Never mind obvious actions that could directly boost wages: things like raising the minimum wage, restoring collective bargaining (which has all but disappeared from private sector workplaces), or abolishing the Commonwealth government’s own strict 2% limit on wage increases for its own employees.

    No, it’s far easier to ascribe record-low wage growth to some perverse characteristic of the workers themselves. After all, the forces of supply and demand are always working their magic: allocating resources efficiently and ensuring everyone gets paid according to their “productivity.” If that payment isn’t enough to live on – well, that must be your fault, not the market’s.

    In this approach the Treasury follows in the footsteps of other efforts by economic experts to ascribe blame for lousy wages anywhere but on Australia’s labour policies – which for many years have been premised on the assumption that government should stay out of the way, and let private market forces do their thing.

    For example, consider Dr Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Even he expresses grave concern about the consequences of weak wage growth, highlighting the dangers to economic growth, consumer finances, and even social stability. But he, too, has ultimately blamed workers for the problem: they are not demanding enough from their bosses, perhaps because they’ve been overly intimidated by fears of job loss arising from about globalisation and robots.

    The Productivity Commission has also weighed in with a robust defense of existing labour market practices; if anything, they say, market forces should be further freed, not reined in. For example, its chair recently proposed eliminating current requirements that enterprise agreements (including those implemented unilaterally by employers, with no union involvement) cannot undercut minimum standards specified in Modern Awards. Will weakening these minimum protections somehow drive wages up? That’s hard to believe – but in any event, if workers really want higher wages, he said, they must acquire the right skills and boost their productivity.

    We should be deeply suspicious of any economic theory that rests on an assumption of collective irrationality by large numbers of people: like Australia’s 12-million-strong workforce. It is true that workers are less likely to voluntarily quit their jobs in recent years – certainly less than the heady 2000s, when many could quit a job one day and get a better paying one the next. Instead, workers are now imbued with a deep sense of insecurity.

    Especially if you’re in the lucky minority who holds a permanent full-time job with normal entitlements (like paid holidays and superannuation), you will naturally be tempted to hang onto it – not because you are unimaginative and lazy, but because you know full well there aren’t many other opportunities out there. Quality jobs are in short supply. And there are almost 3 million underutilised Australians (including unemployed, underemployed, and marginally attached workers) who need and want one. In that context it’s hardly irrational to hold onto your current job. Rather, it’s a predictable response to insecurity.

    Moreover, the insecurity and powerlessness felt by workers is no accident. It’s the deliberate outcome of a generation of labour and social policies predicated precisely on instilling fear and discipline among workers – assuming that will lead to greater obedience and productivity. Newstart has been frozen for a generation; protections against dismissal have been dismantled; steady jobs have been casualised or converted into gigs.

    In that context, there’s little hope of successfully demanding a raise from your boss: more likely, they’ll brand you a troublemaker and not renew your contract. And with strong restrictions on union activity and collective bargaining, there is little institutional possibility for workers to wield collective bargaining power.

    Even if Australia’s workers were to suddenly and collectively develop itchy feet, and abandon their posts en masse in search of greener pastures, wages would still be stuck in the doldrums: there are too many workers chasing too few jobs, and there are no institutional supports (like collective bargaining) to help workers win a better share of the pie.

    But never mind. The high priests of economic policy would still come up with other reason to blame the victims for their own plight – not the system. Perhaps their choice of music. Or their insistence on eating smashed avocado for Sunday brunch. Or their bad planning in being born into families without inherited wealth.

    After six hard years of virtually zero real wage growth, maybe this is a good time to look at what’s wrong with the way Australia’s labour market is working. Instead of blaming the workers who can’t get a raise.

    The post Stuck-in-the-Mud’ Workers Not to Blame for Wage Stagnation appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Where To Now for Union Campaign?

    Workplace Express is Australia’s leading labour policy and industrial relations newsletter. Please visit its website to subscribe.

    Where to Now For Unions?: Experts

    Reprinted from Workplace Express, May 27, 2019.

    Future union membership numbers will depend on how effectively unions organise without being able to rely on the political system delivering changes to workplace laws, according to an expert on employment relations.

    In the immediate aftermath of the Morrison Government’s election win, Griffith University’s Professor David Peetz said it was likely that it would be harder to grow union membership under the Coalition than under Labor.

    “In the end, it’s up to unions to organise effectively, they can’t rely on the political system to deliver what they would like, even though it can’t be denied that politics makes a big difference,” he told Workplace Express.

    Whether union membership would fall under three more years with the Coalition in power depended on a range factors, said Peetz, including the government’s ability to pass inhibiting legislation; the movement’s own organising performance; and the effects of underemployment, which both put a brake on union bargaining power and reduced wages growth.

    “Has the focus on political campaigning taken the edge away from workplace organisation, or has it reinforced it?” said Peetz.

    “Will union activists feel so disillusioned by the election result that they give up?

    “Or will they put more effort into workplace action in recognition of the failure of political action?

    “I think these are all things that will become clearer over the next couple of years.”

    Deal ‘protections’ weaker at the margins: Peetz

    Union membership is currently running at less than 15% of the workforce, with unions having a stronghold in the public or government sector thanks to nurses, teachers, public servants and police (see Related Article).

    However, private sector membership remains a weak point, amid a shift away from enterprise bargaining to award coverage.

    Peetz, who is currently a visiting fellow at City University of New York, said the fall in enterprise bargaining coverage was mostly a delayed result of the decline in union density.

    “EB coverage held up for a while because it suited some employers to stick with union bargaining arrangements when unions were weaker,” he said.

    “But eventually a point had to come where those employers would decide to circumvent unions altogether and/or the award simply caught up with what the EB rates were.

    “Of course it means that fewer people are now getting the ‘protection’ of EBAs, but that protection was getting weaker at the margins anyway, and the bigger picture is the decline in the proportion of people getting the ‘protection’ of unions.”

    Peetz said the biggest impact would be felt in non-union workplaces.

    “In unionised workplaces, it’s workers’ own experiences of unions that will determine how well or badly unions go.

    “Unionism is, to use econo-speak, an ‘experience good’.

    “There, unions’ future is very much in their hands.

    “In non-union workplaces, where quite a few employees have no direct experience of unions – or it was so long ago it’s not really relevant – the ideology that comes through the media is more important, and the question of who’s in government and what they say and do, and what employers with government support do, and what the media themselves do, becomes more important.”

    Private sector bargaining ‘out of reach’: Pennington

    Last year, the Centre for Future Work released a report, On the Brink, contending that enterprise bargaining was on the edge of collapse, largely due to its abandonment by the private sector (see Related Article).

    The report, by Centre economist Alison Pennington, said that more than half of the reduction in private sector coverage is due to the termination or expiry of large agreements in the retail sector and the accommodation and food service sector.

    She found that private sector agreements dropped by 46% between December 2013 and June 2018 (from 22,638 to 10,333), while the number of employees under agreements fell by 34% (from 1,950,561 to 1,288,100).

    Last week, Pennington told Workplace Express that new data from the Department of Jobs showed the number of employees covered by enterprise bargaining has shrunk by another 170,000 in the six months to December 2018.

    She did not expect to see any reversal of the trend without reforms to the bargaining systems and freeing unions from restrictive “anti-organising laws”.

    “What it says, for me, is that bargaining rights are out of reach for the vast majority of private sector workers.”

    Nonetheless, Pennington says that private sector union membership is unlikely to fall further than what she believes to be levels already below 10%.

    And on a positive note for unions, she argued the Changes the Rules campaign was successful in terms of recruiting members, with some unions doing “a lot better than others”.

    Union campaign heard: Stanford

    Centre for Future Work director, Professor Jim Stanford, also said the ACTU campaign succeeded in its first aim to “influence the debate” in the lead-up to the election on wage stagnation, work exploitation and job security.

    “Now the question is how do convert that public opinion that workers need fairer treatment into policy reform given the government that’s in power,” said Stanford.

    “That will be challenging, but it’s not impossible because the Coalition has to keep an eye on where people are at.”

    Stanford said the Coalition could not be “deaf” to public opinion on wage stagnation and job security, and the same was true for the FWC, which last year awarded a 3.5% in minimum wages.

    “I think they [the Commission] heard the concerns about wage stagnation and they recognised they had a role to play.

    “I think the public education and organising that the union movement did will still pay dividends, even with a generally hostile government in power.

    “The wage crisis is not going to go away and I think Australians are well aware are that their pay packers are going nowhere relative to consumer prices.

    “That combination of continued wage suppression with an awakened, angry population … is a pretty potent mix.”

    ‘Remain bold,’ Forsyth tells ACTU

    RMIT University’s Professor Anthony Forsyth has argued on his blog that unions can still tap into “deep problems” in the workplace that Labor sought to address.

    These problems included underpayments, “dodgy” labour hire contractors, workers trapped in long-term casual engagement and the widespread use of rolling, fixed-term contracts.

    “We still have the collapse of collective bargaining in the private sector, and employer ‘work-arounds’ to avoid negotiating an enterprise agreement or get out of an existing one,” says Forsyth.

    “We still don’t have the basis for a real living wage.

    “Rather than shrinking back to a ‘small target’ strategy, as is now being contemplated in other policy areas, I reckon the ACTU should remain bold in its reform ambitions.

    “It should make a more substantive case for ‘changing the rules’ with strong underlying research that precisely measures the nature of the current problems (such as the nature and incidence of ‘insecure work’, a concept that business groups constantly debunk in the media).”

    But Forsyth argued that “organising and connecting with workers on the ground in new and innovative ways” are also essential, as shown by United Voice’s ‘Hospo Voice’ initiative and both the Young Workers Centre and Migrant Workers Centre at Victorian Trades Hall Council.

    “As the National Union of Workers and United Voice put it in the context of their current amalgamation proposal: ‘We need to change the rules, but we also need to change the game’.”

    The post Where To Now for Union Campaign? Workplace Express appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Minimum Wage to Rise 3% for 2019-20

    The Fair Work Commission has announced a 3% hike in Australia’s national Minimum Wage.