We have launched a search for the first Carmichael Fellow. Please see the below call for applications for further information. Applications close at midnight (AEDT) on Monday, 18 January. Thank you for your interest in the Carmichael Centre!
The post Call for Applications: Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Fellow appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.
We are pleased to reprint (download below), with kind permission from In the Black, this profile, titled ‘The People’s Economist‘. Many thanks to the journal and to Ms. Leggatt for the generous article!
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Alison Pennington, Senior Economist with the Centre for Future Work assisted The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) preparing the timely report Leaving Women Behind: The Real Cost of the COVID Recovery. The report documents the gendered impacts of the crisis and the federal government’s COVID-era policies, and outlines a public investment strategy to undo the damage of the crisis, and ensure women play an equal role in an inclusive economic recovery.
To mark the release of ACTU’s report, the Australian Trade Union Institute hosted a webinar with ACTU President Michele O’Neil, Centre for Future Work’s Alison Pennington, Karen Batt (CPSU VIC), Helen Gibbons (UWU) and Julia Fox (SDA). The session presented the main report findings and considered how they might support campaigns for a gender-inclusive recovery.
The full 38-page ACTU report is available below together with Alison’s presentation slides presented for the ATUI webinar.
The post A Women’s Agenda for COVID-Era Reconstruction appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.
This commentary is a longer version of an assessment of the new legislation prepared by Jim Stanford (originally published in The Conversation).
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.
The Centre for Future Work’s 12th annual Go Home on Time Day report shows that, despite total work-hours falling and much of the workforce shifting to ‘work from home’, Australians are currently putting in an average 5.25 hours of unpaid work every week – the equivalent of 7 weeks of full-time work per person, per year.
The report calls for additional protections for people working from home, including limits on hours, overtime pay when relevant, allowances for extra home office expenses, and better OHS rules for home work.
Key Findings:
“This year our annual survey of working hours has highlighted an insidious trend: even when you are ‘home’, unpaid overtime is still rife,” said Dan Nahum, economist at the Centre for Future Work and author of the report.
“For many, the reality of working from home is more like living at work.
“One-third of workers indicated that, post-COVID, they expect to work from home more. But without adequate rules and protections, this risks a further incursion of work into people’s personal time, poorer health and safety standards, and greater polarisation between those jobs that can be conducted from home and those that cannot.
“Employers have a duty of care to the worker, regardless of the location of employment, so it is incredibly concerning—for both employers and employees—that 14% of people working from home indicated their home workspace was not appropriate or not safe.
“COVID-19 has clearly heightened the challenge facing workers of balancing their paid jobs, with their responsibilities at home. Our research shows that working from home is no panacea for this balancing act – in fact, in some ways it makes the problem harder.”
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In this commentary, which originally appeared in The Age, Centre for Future Work Senior Economist Alison Pennington discusses what the pandemic reveals about Australia’s high levels of insecure work, new work-from-home risks, and how rebuilding more secure labour markets will be critical to creating more good jobs in our post-COVID recovery.
The post The Pandemic is Our Clarion Call to Rebuild Good Jobs appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future 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.
Key conclusions of our analysis include:
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.
The report, by the Centre for Future Work, finds that for every 10 direct jobs in state-funded public services, another 4.5 jobs are supported in the QLD private sector. This means that these public services support a total of some 480,000 public and private sector jobs across Queensland. Cuts to public services and staffing would impact private sector jobs and incomes, deepening the recession.
Key Findings:
“In this unprecedented time, the maintenance of public services is surely a more urgent priority than cutting government spending in pursuit of some illusory fiscal target,” said Dan Nahum, Economist at the Centre for Future Work and author of the report.
“By cutting employment and incomes for public sector workers (and the private sector industries which depend on public services for their own markets), misplaced austerity would undermine economic recovery and reduce GDP.
“A more constructive and effective response to the COVID crisis is to expand the economic and social footprint of government, including state governments – not shrink it.
“Attacking public sector employment and compensation, just at the time Queenslanders need more public services, not less, would be a major policy mistake.”
The post 480,000 Jobs Rely on QLD Public Service, Cuts Would Deepen the State’s Recession appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.