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Tag: Economics

  • New Analysis: 12,000 Community Service Jobs at Risk Due to Funding Uncertainty

    New economic research shows up to 12,000 community service jobs are at risk due to the Federal Government’s failure to confirm whether federal funding for community service organisations will be maintained.

    The new report released today by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work demonstrates the economic importance of Commonwealth pay-equity funding at a time when these community services are critical to Australia’s pandemic-damaged economy.

    Key Findings:

    • The Federal Government is yet to confirm whether it will continue $576.5 million in supplemental funding for federally-supported community services, currently set to expire in the current (2020-21) financial year.
    • This special funding was part of the Commonwealth government’s legislated 9-year timetable to phase in pay equity wage adjustments in community services.
    • If this funding is not renewed (either by incorporation into a higher level of core funding for affected organisations, or through the extension of explicit pay equity supplements), the resulting funding shortfall will undermine and reverse the progress that has been made toward pay equity since the 2012 pay equity order.
    • The loss of federal pay equity supplements would inevitably produce some combination of staffing cuts and wage cuts, as organisations respond to such a significant loss of funding.

    “If experienced fully through staff cuts, the end of federal supplements would result in the loss of close to 12,000 jobs in federally-supported community organisations,” said Dr. Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “Alternatively, if the brunt of the funding cut is experienced through effective wage reductions it would reduce annual incomes for federally-funded community service workers by as much as $15,000 for full-time staff.

    “To put up to 12,000 community service jobs at risk, or force community service workers to take a $15,000 a year pay cut in the middle of global pandemic and an economic recession is both heartless and economically self-destructive,” Dr. Stanford said.

    The Centre for Future Work report also found that the broad health and social services sector (which includes most of these community service organisations) has reduced the gender pay gap by more than any other industry in the years since the pay equity reform was announced.

    Those past gains will be undermined and reversed unless federal funding consistent with new pay equity norms is quickly confirmed.

    The post New Analysis: 12,000 Community Service Jobs at Risk Due to Funding Uncertainty appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Webinar: How TAFE Can Drive Australia’s Skills and Jobs Recovery

    To mark National TAFE Day and the release of new research by the Centre for Future Work on the economic and social benefits of the TAFE system, The Australia Institute hosted a timely discussion on how the TAFE system can drive a COVID-era skills and jobs recovery with ACTU President Michele O’Neil, Correna Haythorpe, federal president of the Australian Education Union, and Alison Pennington, Senior Economist at the Centre for Future Work.

    The webinar was presented as part of the Australia Institute’s widely acclaimed Economics of a Pandemic webinar series and explored why the TAFE system has been in turmoil, the historic role it has played generating a more skilled workforce and productive economy, and how we can fix it.

    The post Webinar: How TAFE Can Drive Australia’s Skills and Jobs Recovery appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Failure to Invest in New Tech Damaging Economy, Incomes & Jobs

    The report findings contrast sharply with the common concern that robots and other forms of automation will threaten future job security for Australian workers.

    Major findings include:

    • Business investment in new machinery (including robots) is weaker than at any point in Australia’s post-war history.
    • Business spending on new research and technology has also been falling in Australia, and now ranks well behind the average of other industrial countries (and even some emerging economies, like China).
    • The average amount of machinery and equipment used by the typical Australian worker has been declining since 2014, and has since fallen by 6%.
    • Because of less automation and innovation, average productivity in Australia’s economy has also been declining for three straight years – also the weakest performance in Australia’s post-war history.

    “Australian businesses are not investing nearly enough in new technology,” said Dr Jim Stanford, Economist and Director of the Centre for Future Work.

    “This lack of business investment in new technology does not mean that Australian jobs are somehow safer. To the contrary, the failure of business investment means that even more jobs will be located in low-productivity, low-tech, low-wage industries – with terrible implications for wages and job quality.

    “Business leaders love to complain that Australia’s productivity problems are due to red tape, taxes, and unions. The evidence is clear that their own failure to invest in new capital and new technology explains the stagnation in productivity. Instead of blaming others for this outcome, business leaders need to look in the mirror.”

    The post Failure to Invest in New Tech Damaging Economy, Incomes & Jobs appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • TAFE system supports $92.5 billion in annual economic benefits

    The report adopts a multidimensional approach to measuring the wide economic and social benefits of the TAFE system resulting from Australia’s historic investments in public vocational education. Over $6 billion in economic activity and 48,000 jobs are supported by the direct operation of TAFE institutes and the TAFE supply-chain. Through its accumulated contribution to the employability and skills of Australians, the TAFE system generates another flow of benefits worth $84.9 billion per year in higher incomes and productivity. Those benefits are shared by workers in higher incomes, firms in higher profits, and federal and state governments – which receive $25 billion per year in extra tax revenues. Finally, another $1.5 billion in fiscal savings are enjoyed by governments through reduced costs for health and welfare benefits for TAFE graduates. Altogether, the TAFE system drives $92.5 billion in benefits per year – equal to almost 5% of Australia’s GDP.

    The report finds despite chronic underfunding, Australia’s historic investment in the TAFE system continues to generate an enormous and ongoing dividend to the Australian economy. Increased public investment in the skills and earning capabilities of Australians will be critical to our post-pandemic recovery.

    Key Findings:

    • Australia’s historic investments in quality TAFE education supports a combined and ongoing flow of total economic benefits worth $92.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2019 — 16 times greater than the annual ‘maintenance’ costs Australia currently reinvests in the TAFE system.
    • The presence and activity of TAFE institutes ‘anchors’ over $6 billion per year in economic activity and 48,000 jobs from the direct operation of the TAFE system and its supply chain, and ‘downstream’ consumer spending impacts.
    • The TAFE-trained workforce generates $84.9 billion per year in higher incomes and business productivity. $49.3 billion is paid in additional earnings to TAFE-credentialed workers (relative to earnings of workers without post-school training); businesses receive $35.6 billion in increased profits from a more productive TAFE-trained workforce.
    • The costs of delivering TAFE are modest – only $5.7 billion per year, or 0.3% GDP. Extra tax revenues received by governments thanks to the superior productivity and incomes of TAFE-trained workers alone are worth $25 billion per year: 4.4 times more than the total costs of running the TAFE system.
    • The TAFE system increases employability and lowers unemployment. TAFE graduates enter the labour force with better employment prospects and skills. The increased labour force participation and employability of TAFE graduates corresponds to additional employment of 486,000.
    • The TAFE system promotes wider social benefits critical to addressing inequality. TAFE helps ‘bridge’ access to further education and jobs pathways in regional areas and for special and at-risk youth groups. TAFE students are more likely to come from low-income households and identify as Aboriginal compared with private VET providers.

    “Australia will squander the demonstrated economic benefits generated by our investments in the TAFE system, and unnecessarily limit our post-COVID recovery if we don’t act quickly to reinstate the critical role that TAFE plays in the VET system,” said Alison Pennington, senior economist at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “The Australian economy is reaping an enormous flow of economic benefits from a VET ‘house’ built by the TAFE system. But the ‘house’ that TAFE institutes built is crumbling. If Australia wants to secure the benefits of a superior, productive TAFE-trained workforce as we prepare for post-COVID reconstruction, the damage must be repaired quickly.

    “Major public skills investments will be best coordinated by TAFE institutes as the longest-standing and most reliable ‘anchors’ of vocational training and must be at the centre of an economic reconstruction process.

    “By providing bridges to further education and jobs for regional, low-income and at-risk youth groups, the TAFE system is critically important to addressing systemic inequality in Australia’s economy and society.”

    The post TAFE system supports $92.5 billion in annual economic benefits appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Post-COVID Manufacturing Renewal Represents Potential $50 Billion Boost to Economy

    Key Findings:

    • Australia ranks last in manufacturing self-sufficiency among all OECD countries. Australians use $565 billion worth of manufactures each year, however, we only produce $380 billion. Therefore, Australia produces only 68% (just over two-thirds) of what we use: less than any other OECD economy.
    • The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strategic importance of domestic manufacturing capacity. Disruptions in global supply chains and protectionist trade policies by foreign governments have increased risks we might not be able to access essential products (like health equipment and supplies) when we need it.
    • Manufacturing is not just ‘another’ sector of the economy. For several concrete reasons, manufacturing carries strategic importance to broader national prosperity and security.
      • Australians purchase and use more manufactured goods over time; and manufacturing output is growing around the world. Allowing domestic manufacturing to decline, while our use of manufactured products grows, undermines national economic performance.
      • Manufacturing is the most innovation-intensive sector in the whole economy. No country can be an innovation leader without a strong manufacturing base.
      • 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.
      • Manufacturing anchors hundreds of thousands of other jobs throughout the economy, thanks to its long and complex supply chain. Billions of dollars’ worth of supplies and inputs are purchased by manufacturing facilities, supporting many other sectors of the economy.
      • Manufacturing offers high-quality jobs, full-time hours and above-average incomes. And thanks to strong productivity growth and the capacity to apply modern technology, manufacturing offers the prospect of rising incomes in the future.

    “As Australian governments and business leaders realise the importance of manufacturing in rebuilding the national economy after COVID, this research shows that Australia now has the smallest manufacturing industry relative to domestic purchases of any OECD country,” said Dr. Jim Stanford, Director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work and author of the report.

    “These findings confirm the enormous task ahead of the country in rebuilding our domestic manufacturing capacity. However, it also highlights the enormous economic benefits that would be generated by getting manufacturing back to a proportional size: including $180 billion in new sales, $50 billion in new GDP, and over 400,000 new direct jobs.

    “While two-way international trade in manufactured products will always be essential, as a nation we should be manufacturing in aggregate as much as we are using. If we rebuilt a manufacturing sector that was broadly proportionate to our needs, our manufacturing industry would grow by almost 50% – generating enormous benefits in jobs, incomes, innovation and exports.”

    The post Post-COVID Manufacturing Renewal Represents Potential $50 Billion Boost to Economy appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Victorian Inquiry Offers Novel Routes to Regulating Gig Work

    This commentary outlines the key findings of the On-Demand Inquiry.

    Victorian Inquiry Offers Novel Routes to Regulating Gig Work

    Findings from a landmark inquiry commissioned by the Victorian government into the work conditions in the “on demand” (gig) economy have been released. The Inquiry confirms workplace laws have failed to keep pace with economic change.

    Release of the report’s findings are timely with COVID-era unemployment surging and an expanding pool of vulnerable workers relying on “gig” work to meet living costs. How do platform “digital sweatshops” work?

    Platform business models recruit workers without access to secure and better compensated jobs (especially migrant and young workers). Jobs performed are often menial and without adequate safety protections. Gig workers lack stable work schedules or incomes, and receive wages that often fall well-below social norms and legal minimums.

    The major recommendations by the Inquiry chaired by former Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James include:

    • A more systematic application of the “work test” currently used to classify workers as employees or independent contractors by codifying the test in the Fair Work Act (rather than common law). This would create a nationally coherent framework for extending protections including minimum pay and conditions to gig workers genuinely working for another’s business.
    • Alter competition laws and establish a new industry Award to enable gig workers to bargain collectively with platforms.
    • Strengthen the gig work regulatory regime through industry codes of conduct between platforms, governments and unions for non-employee gig workers, overseen by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and allow an independent tribunal to oversee work status determinations.

    We commend the Inquiry on the ambitious scale of the investigation, and the innovative pathway proposed for gig work regulation.

    Three Centre for Future Work reports on gig work in Australia were cited in the final report. Research by Director Jim Stanford (with Andrew Stewart from University of Adelaide) featured in the report’s major recommendation that collective bargaining rights be extended to gig workers to lift pay and conditions of gig work.

    Read our full submission to the Inquiry — Turning Gigs Into Decent Jobs — by Jim Stanford and Alison Pennington.

    The post Victorian Inquiry Offers Novel Routes to Regulating Gig Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Austerity Threatens Women’s Access to Paid Work

    In this commentary, originally published in the New Daily, Senior Economist at the Centre for Future Work Alison Pennington outlines how government’s austerity agenda has intensified the unequal jobs fallout and threatens to “turn back the clock” for women’s economic security.

    How the government is turning back the clock for women

    The increase in women’s workforce participation is the most significant labour market trend of the past 40 years.

    However, in the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, the gender boundaries of paid work are being redrawn.

    Worse still, the government is the one holding the pen.

    Women have suffered the worst labour market impacts since the shutdowns.

    Total employment fell by 7.3 per cent for women compared with 5.7 per cent for men between February and May.

    About 450,000 women have lost their jobs and 350,000 left the labour market all together.

    Women saw a 12 per cent decline in hours worked, compared to 9 per cent for men.

    This gender inequity stems from three main channels:

    This combination has created a ‘perfect storm’ for women in the workplace.

    However, instead of stepping up to provide countervailing support, the federal government is only exacerbating the crisis.

    This started back when JobKeeper was announced and excluded short-term casuals by design, which affects more women than men.

    And then, most recently the government targeted early JobKeeper cuts to childcare workers in what is a cruel double blow.

    Not only do more women work in child care, but more women benefit from access to affordable child care.

    The cumulative impact of Australia’s effective gender pay gap of 32 per cent (in average weekly earnings for all workers) and inadequate parental leave supports for cash-strapped families makes their work-care decisions clear cut.

    Without affordable child care, mum’s got to stay home.

    There’s more bad news on the industrial relations front.

    Last week the Fair Work Commission decided to freeze minimum wages for up to seven months, in the sectors with the lowest wages and most precarious jobs – which are, surprise, mostly women’s jobs.

    While women have been bearing the brunt of the economic impacts of COVID19, state and federal governments have targeted stimulus spending on the most bloke-heavy industry in the economy – construction.

    For every $1 million invested in construction only 0.2 direct jobs are generated for women.

    Yet $1 million invested in education generates almost 11 jobs for women.

    In fact, education investment creates more jobs for just women than construction creates for anybody: Man or woman.

    Job-generating spending for women is best directed to the public sector.

    Women make up 61 per cent of all public sector workers, with the sector supporting fuller female participation – women hold 54 per cent of full-time roles but only 35 per cent of full-time roles in the private sector.

    Not only would public sector pay cuts risk driving this recession into a depression, they disproportionately hurt women’s incomes.

    Even temporary wage freezes (of one or two years) compound into tens of thousands of dollars in lost wages compounding over her working life.

    And austerity pain radiates far beyond income losses for affected workers, reducing consumer spending (right when the economy needs more), tax revenues and enhancing deflation risk.

    When the largest employer in the economy cuts wages, it has a powerful effect for other employers.

    It’s not just a hunch, this is exactly what happened after the GFC.

    The unnecessary 2011-12 federal public sector wages caps cut the legs out from everyone’s wages.

    But the pain induced from pay cuts doesn’t end there. Because lower-wage environments breed insecure work.

    People accept lower-quality jobs or juggle multiple jobs to earn the same income. Women are much more likely to work these precarious jobs.

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison has acknowledged that COVID-19’s fallout has been harshest on women.

    Yet his government is pushing an agenda that will ensure there will be less jobs for women, and they’ll be worse paid.

    Economic inclusion of women must be targeted in a long-term, sustained public investment plan that mops up the private sector carnage and lets us build back better.

    The post Austerity Threatens Women’s Access to Paid Work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Repairing Universities & Skills Key to Meeting COVID-Era Challenges

    Our Senior Economist Alison Pennington was interviewed by UTS The Social Contract podcast on how COVID-19 is reshaping relations between universities, government and industry. 

    Alison explains how the pandemic economic crisis presents significant challenges to Australia’s fragmented, underfunded and unplanned skills system wounded from decades of failed marketisation policies, and why sustained public investments in skills and jobs pathways will be essential to solving our economic and social challenges. 

    Listen to the episode on Whooshkaa. She is joined by Megan Lilly, head of Workforce Development at the Australian Industry Group.

    The post Repairing Universities & Skills Key to Meeting COVID-Era Challenges appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Unleashing a National Reconstruction Plan Fit for Our Era

    In this commentary originally published in the Newcastle Herald Centre for Future Work Senior Economist Alison Pennington explains why Australia needs a public spending program proportionate to the nature, speed and depth of this crisis, and outlines some priorities for a public-led post-COVID-19 reconstruction plan.

    Why governments must spend, spend, spend to save the Australian economy

    Our nation faces the most significant economic challenge in nearly a century. GDP will likely contract at least 20 per cent compared to pre-pandemic levels, with millions of jobs already on the scrapheap.

    Unbelievably, a top priority for governments has become freezing or cutting wages, public sector pay freezes and an industrial relations power play to kill the Awards system.

    Recent research on impacts of the NSW government’s proposed public sector wage freeze shows over 1100 jobs will be lost from workers’ lower consumption.

    Cutting wages and dooming working people to poverty is senseless. But governments refuse to learn from our own historical crisis responses in the GFC and the Great Depression.

    We recovered from the GFC better than other countries because government invested in keeping people in jobs (key word here is “invested”).

    Others countries that walked the austerity path were mired for years with lower growth and higher unemployment.

    But stimulus soon ran dry and critical failures of the business-led economy were painfully evident before the pandemic: declining business investment in new capital and innovation; the slowest sustained pace of wages growth since WWII; rising inequality; an explosion in insecure jobs and the labour underutilisation rate.

    It will be impossible for this emaciated economy to “snap back”. We need a powerful public policy response proportionate to the nature, speed and depth of this crisis. Discrete government stimulus programs will not cut it.

    But Scott Morrison continues to pretend his hands are tied: “if there’s no business, there’s no jobs, there’s no income, there’s nothing.” Market ideologues said this for 10 years during the Depression.

    They tried to convince people government was powerless to fix joblessness and protect living standards, heralding a private-sector recovery that never came.

    But there is something called public investment, Prime Minister. It’s what we did on a mass coordinated scale to ensure we didn’t return to the economic and social turmoil of the Depression.

    And it’s this fully-fledged comprehensive national government spending program we need now.

    Government must break the investment gridlock. There are many priorities for a public-led post-COVID-19 reconstruction plan including: repairing and expanding our public healthcare and education systems; a sustained public investment program, for transportation, energy, utilities, and social housing; and building our renewable energy systems and networks.

    We have the most educated generation in our history, and young workers have been disproportionately affected by the decline in hours worked and unemployment in this crisis.

    Let’s expand genuine career pathways before we lose a generation of skills, passion and potential.

    Universities have been decimated by the loss of foreign students and exclusion from the JobKeeper wage subsidy.

    Meanwhile, the disastrously privatised VET system cannot meet the needs of our economy for skilled workers. We need a complete reconstruction of the post-secondary skills system, with government funding injected into pillar institutions in both public universities and TAFE.

    Ensuring public money is targeted to people’s needs demands greater participation across all levels of society.

    We need to open avenues for collective representation – not shut them down. In the rebuild, we need new localised reconstruction and jobs plans, especially for regional communities rebuilding from bushfires, anti-union laws lifted and a new sectoral bargaining system to increase participation and coordination of workers across industries.

    The only actor with sufficient investment power and planning capacity to lead economic reconstruction is government.

    With the private sector wounded, it’s time we got comfortable with invoking direct tools of public investment, tools forced out of favour during a generation of market-worshipping neoliberal policy but which are essential to our recovery today.

    This is a historic crossroads moment.

    Should government refuse to take up the investment mantle they will plunge millions into misery only to endow a smaller layer of business the power to restructure a harsher, more unequal economy.

    In 1942, years before the war ended, our national government formed a National Reconstruction Department to begin planning for post-war rebuilding.

    We can unleash another national reconstruction plan fit for our era. One with a commitment to full employment at its heart, that pulls us through COVID-19 with stronger public services, and paves our way to a sustainable future.

    The post Unleashing a National Reconstruction Plan Fit for Our Era appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Australia Needs Universal Paid Sick Leave To Get Through the Pandemic

    In this commentary, which originally appeared in 10 Daily, Centre for Future Work Senior Economist Alison Pennington discusses the consequences of low paid sick leave coverage for worker safety and public health efforts during the pandemic, and reviews the merits of a universal paid sick leave scheme to address both COVID-19 and precarious work.

    ‘No More Heroics Going To Work Sick’ Sounds Fine Unless You Have No Paid Leave

    Remember the Codral ‘soldier on’ television commercial? “With Codral you can soldier on”.

    In 2008 a concerned citizen on a WA hospital pandemic influenza committee complained to the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB), worried the ‘soldier on’ message would ingrain community habits that could undermine emergency efforts during a national/international pandemic.

    The ASB dismissed the complaint, agreeing that Codral was designed to self-medicate for “sniffles”, not for more serious influenza symptoms.

    Now fast-forward to the present day. The world is facing a global pandemic. It’s clear the decision has not aged well.

    Outlining plans to get people back to work, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy announced last week “no more heroics”. Going to work with a sniffle is now “off the agenda for every Australian for the foreseeable future”.

    I welcome Murphy’s sentiment. Changing social attitudes and behaviours is key to infection control.

    But sentiment isn’t policy.

    Murphy’s public health directive is out of touch with the reality for working Australians who, Codral or not, continue to soldier on in a labour market marred by precarity, low wages, and jobs without basic sick leave protections.

    In fact, more than 3.3 million workers have no access to sick leave – almost one in three workers. This includes almost one-quarter of the workforce employed on a casual basis. One million more are independent contractors, including many so-called ‘gig workers’ — better described as misclassified employees like food delivery drivers.

    Casuals without sick leave are often the most vulnerable workers in the economy. As unemployment surges they will feel increasingly pressured to work every shift they can. There are real financial consequences of taking unpaid leave from the workplace. The bills don’t stop rolling in. Rent needs to be paid.

    Even before the pandemic, going to work sick is not some benign workplace habit. Taking sick leave is perceived by many bosses as a lack of commitment to the job. Workers are often punished for absences with diminished opportunities and disciplinary performance management akin to bullying. This fuels high levels of presenteeism — even for those with sick leave entitlements.

    The new COVID-19 work regime is exposing society-wide risks of unequal sick leave coverage. About 30 percent of the workforce have the potential to work from home — predominantly professionals, managers and administrative workers. Insulated from contagion, remote workers are paid almost 25 percent more than those working outside the home. They’re more likely to be permanent, full-time workers with sick leave.

    Meanwhile millions of essential workers across supermarkets, transport, cleaning and community and social services go to work each day exposed to both income precarity and higher viral loads, all without the ‘safety’ of sick leave and secure work.

    The common factor in the two major workplace COVID-19 outbreaks at Cedar Meats and Newmarch House aged-care facility is labour hire: on-call work with no guarantee of future shifts. And no sick leave.

    To put it bluntly: in a pandemic, insecure jobs with no sick leave will literally kill people.

    The Fair Work Commission introduced two weeks unpaid sick leave for half the private sector workforce in April. Unpaid sick leave is, however, useless in preventing workers coming to work unwell if the outcome of sickness is still financial punishment.

    This is why Australia needs universal paid sick leave: a system that allows for up to four weeks of leave to account for the full incubation, treatment and recovery lifecycle of COVID-19.

    It’s easy to do this. The New Zealand Ardern Government introduced a sick leave scheme for all NZ businesses, organisations and self-employed people under hardship due to COVID-19 from day dot. Australian policymakers have been slow to act on sick leave reform, but it can act now.

    A universal sick leave scheme can be publicly funded and transferred to employers at a future date when they’re in better shape. To signal the transfer of obligations, the entitlement should be entered into the National Employment Standards (NES) — the set of minimum employment conditions covering all employees — with an additional scheme for independent contractors not covered by the NES.

    The elephant in the room is that government intends to plough on with a ‘bosses knows best’ industrial relations agenda that would expand casual jobs (without sick leave), cut wages, and undermine workplace coordination needed to contain the disease.

    But it will be impossible to resume economic activity without universal paid sick leave — lest we risk dangerous and costly outbreaks.

    Trust, discipline and sacrifice has been demonstrated by Australians to flatten the curve and ensure community safety. It’s time government reflected this good will in people’s working lives.

    The virus doesn’t care about the employment status of its host. We must combine principles of public health with safe, secure jobs.

    Taking a codral won’t help us soldier on through this pandemic. Legislating universal paid sick leave will.

    The post Australia Needs Universal Paid Sick Leave To Get Through the Pandemic appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.