My Blog

Tag: Employment & Unemployment

  • Australia dumps its care crisis on the Pacific

    A report by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute and Public Services International has also found that when workers get to Australia, many are being deskilled, underpaid and exploited.

    Care workers have been added to the Pacific Australia Labor Mobility (PALM) scheme, traditionally aimed at seasonal agriculture workers like fruit pickers. This has led to skilled health workers – like nurses – quitting their jobs to take up better paid but lower skilled jobs in Australia.

    The report details the harrowing state of the health systems in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Many health services and hospitals have been decimated, operating at 30-40 percent capacity or below.

    The research reveals that not only are Pacific workers doing lower-skilled care jobs in Australia, they are vulnerable to poor treatment, due to their visa status.

    “Workers have the right to cross borders for a better life for themselves and their families,” said Fiona Macdonald, Director of the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute.

    “But the current system is broken. It is rich countries taking from poor countries and giving nothing back. Australia and New Zealand are offloading their own care crises to their Pacific neighbours.

    “Australia has vowed to invest in the health systems of its Pacific neighbours, not destroy them. It should be helping to build better, safer health facilities and train workers, not lure them away.

    “We are taking workers out of a system already at breaking point, giving them jobs which are below their skill level and failing to protect them from exploitation and mistreatment.

    “The recruiting and labour hire systems, including international schemes like PALM, need urgent reform. This should start with meaningful dialogue with the workers themselves.”

    The post Australia dumps its care crisis on the Pacific – new report appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Addressing the health workforce crisis in the Pacific

    Labour mobility is a significant contributor to Pacific Islands’ economies.

    Australia and New Zealand’s temporary labour migration schemes for Pacific workers have expanded into more industries including personal care work in aged care.

    This has led to the loss of skilled health workers from Pacific Island countries, including registered nurses, to lower-skilled personal care jobs overseas.

    Workers who take up temporary migration in Australia and New Zealand are vulnerable to being underpaid and exploited, due to their visa status.

    This report examines the need for reform of labour migration systems and greater consultation with workers.

    The post Addressing the health workforce crisis in the Pacific appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • The curious incident of low wages growth

    A new Carmichael Centre report by David Peetz considers why wages growth has been so low, despite a tight labour market and a brief surge in inflation.

    Asking why has there been no wages explosion, Peetz finds the answer lies in loss of power.

    The report documents how workers have lost power in the past two decades, with almost every change in the economy taking away workers’ bargaining power.

    From 2014 to 2022 most government policies took away workers’ bargaining power. The most recent industrial relations reforms in 2022-2024 shifted the pendulum back some way towards workers. These laws increased workers power and have also boosted wages growth.

    The analysis shows that all workers have had their wages damaged by lack of power. And all workers have been able to recover some ground since the recent industrial relations laws have come into effect.

    • Australian workers can no longer obtain the wage increases that they previously could from wage negotiations. Workers do not contribute to inflation.
    • Changes in power have combined to normalise low wages growth, for both union and non-union workers, even in tight labour markets. Of 16 developments in the labour market and economy over the past 50 years, 14 signalled deterioration in worker power, one an improvement in power for female workers only, and one an improvement only from 2010 until 2023 (lower unemployment).
    • The one countervailing force in recent times has been public policy which, since 2022, has led to some increases in workers’ power. Analysis of 34 policy events showed that the majority of those before 2022 further reduced workers’ bargaining power, while almost all of those since then have increased workers’ power.
    • In March 2014 wages were 53.0% of national income, but by December 2022 they had fallen to just 50.3%, before recovering to 53.5% by September 2024.
    • Wages grew at a little over 2% per year through most of the period from 2013-14. After September 2022, they grew more quickly, to over 4% per annum throughout 2023-24.
    • The wage gains associated with increased worker power are not just restricted to unionists, but they are likely greater for unionists than non-unionists.

    The post The curious incident of low wages growth appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Briefing Paper: Restoring public sector capability

    The Australian Public Service (APS) is responsible for delivering some of the most crucial social services to all Australians. The APS workforce includes employees who deliver frontline services like in Medicare and Centrelink, those who administer the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and those who assist service personnel and veterans via Veterans Affairs. These are just some of the functions that APS employees undertake. Behind front line service delivery staff are employees who support these staff, work to coordinate and integrate services and provide policy and regulatory advice to government.

    This briefing paper examines the make-up of the APS and considers recent efforts to improve APS service delivery. We conclude that recent investment in the employment of more APS employees has improved service delivery and that any reduction in APS employees will reduce service delivery or result in the engagement of more consultants and contractors.

    In this paper we debunk several of the myths promoted in the political debate around the size of Australia’s public service. One such myth is that Australia’s public service is “bloated” or “inefficient”. The research also found that despite claims to the contrary, most of the public service jobs created since 2022 were not based in Canberra.

    The post Briefing Paper: Restoring public sector capability through investment in public service employees appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • No Blood – No Job: Privacy laws and workers rights

    Organisations in Australia are using blood analysis as a means of screening future employees for ‘health risks’ that they allege may impact on their performance of work.

    Collecting sensitive information from blood analysis is restricted under Australia’s privacy laws. This is because the mishandling of this information can have a substantial detrimental impact on those who have provided the information. Requiring workers to submit to blood analysis is just one example of how organisations are now routinely collecting sensitive information from workers, sometimes without adhering to the requirements of privacy laws. Other examples include using fingerprint and facial recognition software and sensors that collect physiological and psychological data about workers.

    The protection from arbitrary interference with a person’s privacy is a fundamental human right. Interfering with this right, by collecting sensitive personal information, should occur in limited circumstances and only where necessary. However, this report shows that some organisations in Australia, are not treating the collection of sensitive information from workers as an exception. They are collecting sensitive information as a routine step in their employment processes.

    The findings of this report raise concerns about power, privacy, fairness, and the potential for discrimination in the practices being adopted by some organisations. These findings also show that Australia’s current privacy and workplace relations laws do not adequately address these concerns. Amendments to Australian privacy laws are currently being considered by the Australian Government with reforms likely to be put before the Australian Parliament before the end of 2024.

    This report examines the need for new provisions within either or both privacy or workplace relations laws that set out the rights of workers to protect their sensitive information. It argues that regulation should be geared towards, not only protecting workers’ rights to privacy, but to providing a disincentive to organisations hoarding and misuse of the personal and sensitive information of workers.

    The worker-centric approach called for in this report includes:

    • the development of one system of regulation to protect the privacy concerns of all workers regardless of employment status or work context
    • defining the collection of workers’ personal and sensitive information as high risk requiring both specific and detailed justification for the collection of this information and the genuine informed and affirmative consent of workers
    • the establishment of a tripartite mechanism to assist the regulator to develop and manage processes for dealing with the privacy and related human rights concerns of workers
    • the use of codes and frameworks, developed via a tripartite mechanism, to set out when and how workers’ information can be collected and used
    • the development of an easy to access, and timely, worker centered mechanism to address concerns about the collection and use of workers’ information.

    The post No Blood – No Job appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Employee voice and new rights for workplace union delegates

    Some employers have actively placed barriers in the way of volunteer union delegates and paid officials. One study in the early 2000s found that 23% of delegates found management
    hostile, while 22% of delegates reported that management opposition to their role as a delegate had become more intense over the previous two years. Examples from various case studies, including court and industrial cases, illustrate some of the ways in which that minority of employers from workplaces with delegates expressed their hostility towards unionism and their opposition to delegates, including by placing barriers in the way of workplace union activists and delegates.

    The new regime of workplace delegates’ rights is very likely, overall, to increase the voice of employees, and thereby have positive consequences, over the long run, for pay and conditions, union membership, workplace cooperation, grievance resolution and productivity. However, the effects of new rights for paid union training leave depend very much on union responses, in particular on their subsequent reliance on classroom versus informal training and the ‘follow up’ of classroom education.

    The post Employee voice and new rights for workplace union delegates appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Closing Loopholes: Important repairs to the industrial relations system, no more, no less

    Labour hire workers can no longer be paid less than employees doing the same job in their workplaces as a result of industrial reforms passed by Parliament.

    However, other important reforms to close loopholes in employment laws and stop exploitation of workers and avoidance of standards won’t be voted on in Parliament until next year.

    This leaves gig platform workers and road transport contractors waiting to get much-needed minimum pay and conditions standards.

    On the final sitting day of Parliament for 2023, the government’s amended Closing Loopholes bill was passed.

    With a Senate Inquiry into the bill due to report in February it was a surprise to many that some of the reforms were legislated, especially the so-called same-job, same-pay labour hire reforms that had been strongly contested by employers.

    This reform targets gaps in laws that have allowed some large and profitable corporations, including BHP and Qantas, to use labour hire to engage workers on rates that undercut those agreed in enterprise agreements.

    A Senate Inquiry heard evidence that, as a result of employers using labour hire this way, workers were being paid up to tens of thousands of dollars less than employees doing the same work in the same workplace.

    As with the government’s 2022 Secure Jobs, Better Pay bargaining reforms, opposition by some employers to this latest reform has been intense, involving an expensive and unnecessary scare campaign.

    The mining employers’ advocacy body, the Minerals Council, was reported to be spending up to $24 million to fight the labour hire changes and, on the day of the bill’s passing, issued a statement greatly exaggerating the nature and extent of the reform by declaring it to be a ‘‘dramatic rewriting of workplace law’’.

    To get the IR changes through the Senate the government needed to secure the support of key independents and, as a result of this, some parts of the Closing Loopholes bill were set aside to be considered by Parliament in February.

    The parts of the bill set aside until next year include minimum standards for digital platform and road transport workers and changes that make it easier for casual employees who want to become permanent.

    Getting the platform and road transport industry changes in place will be critical for improving working lives and ensuring fair pay and conditions for tens of thousands of low-paid and vulnerable workers who are currently without most rights to minimum standards at work, due to their classification as contractors.

    The reticence of independent senators Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock to pass the platform and road transport industry reforms is perhaps not surprising, given the strong and powerful lobby groups and companies such as Uber, who insist all platform workers are entrepreneurs and small business people not in need of protections, despite the numbers of young, inexperienced, migrant and vulnerable workers in these arrangements.

    Platforms say the costs to consumers will increase exponentially. Small business groups argue reforms are all too complicated and may have far-reaching unintended consequences.

    Labour law experts disagree. It is to be hoped that the extra time for consideration of the proposed changes gives the independents an opportunity to go with the evidence.

    With the support of the Greens and the independent senators some other important Closing Loopholes reforms were in the legislation passed.

    These include new laws to make wage theft a criminal offence, reforms to better protect some workers’ redundancy entitlements and changes to enhance work health and safety.

    Industrial manslaughter will now be a criminal offence, protections for workers experiencing family and domestic violence will be strengthened, and first responders/emergency workers with PTSD will have improved access to support.

    Making superannuation theft a crime is a welcome outcome of the government’s negotiations with the Greens.

    There can be little doubt of the need to act on intentional non-payment of superannuation, with the Australian Taxation Office recently reporting that Australian workers are owed more than $2 billion in unpaid superannuation.

    Superannuation theft not only affects workers’ retirement incomes but can see death and disability insurances cancelled.

    The government has also agreed to consider an amendment to provide workers with a right to disconnect from work outside work hours.

    Despite the protestations of some employer groups there is not much that can be called radical in the Closing Loopholes reform package.

    For the most part, the reforms passed this year and the ones still on the table are exactly what the government says they are – improvements to plug gaps and close loopholes that have allowed some workers to miss out on basic protections, standards and benefits that most other workers enjoy and most employers are happy to provide.

    The post Closing Loopholes: Important repairs to the industrial relations system, no more, no less appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • New Report Reveals Changing Face and Future of Self-Employment

    The Centre for Future Work’s Carmichael Centre study shows that self-employment is both shrinking and becoming more precarious.

    Over the past decade, there were 112,000 fewer employers, 35,000 more part-time solo self-employed, and 91,000 fewer full-time solo self-employed than there would have been if their shares of total employment had remained unchanged.

    “Contrary to some predictions, self-employment has not taken over the world – but the nature of what self-employment means has changed,” said David Peetz, research fellow and author of Self Employment Myths & Realities.

    “Self-employment is in decline, not just in Australia but overseas.

    “The only thing that’s growing in the self-employment area is part-time, solo self-employment. A lot of that is ‘gig’ work. It’s insecure, the pay is poor, it’s sometimes even dangerous.

    “The nature of what self-employment means has changed. For someone wanting to be their own boss, it’s a lot harder these days to get a small business into markets. Big firms aren’t keen to let them in. They’re a lot happier to just hire a contractor to do short gigs for them.

    “There’s a lot of barriers to start-ups, but there’s no barriers to how many delivery drivers rely on three different apps to make ends meet.

    “This has left many self-employed workers exposed to poorly regulated or non-existent workplace standards.”

    The report shows standards and protections can be set for gig workers. This can be done in ways that these workers actually want, without getting in the way of the genuine innovators among the self-employed.

    “The second tranche of the government’s Closing Loopholes Bill puts a floor on gig work standards and is vital to protect livelihoods and the economy,” Professor Peetz said.

    “Workers want the flexibility that comes with self-employment, but they also want and deserve to be protected.

    “The protections in the government’s Closing Loopholes Bill, returning to parliament next year, strike the right balance between protecting the right to choose self-employment and stamping out exploitation of vulnerable workers.”

    The post New Report Reveals Changing Face and Future of Self-Employment appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • A Better Future for Self-Employment (gig work)

    The first is that self-employment is inexorably growing. The second is that self-employment cannot, or should not, be regulated in order to protect self-employed workers and improve the conditions of their work.

    This new report from the Carmichael Centre at the Centre for Future Work shows that, in reality, self-employment is not growing inexorably — in fact, in most countries (including Australia) it is declining.

    The much-trumpeted surge in self-employment and ‘freelancing’ is a myth. However, the nature of self-employment is changing: fewer self-employed people are running successful independent businesses, and more are engaged in precarious ‘solo’ activities like short-term contracting and part-time ‘gig’ work.

    The report also shows that some forms of self-employment can be regulated to protect affected workers, provided two simple and important criteria are satisfied: the workers are vulnerable and hence need protection, and a viable mechanism exists that enables their work to be efficiently regulated.

    The report reviews the proposed provisions of the second part of the federal government’s new Closing Loopholes legislation, which would allow for minimum labour standards to be applied to digital platform workers and owner-operators in the transportation sector. The new legislation (to be considered in Parliament in 2024) is an appropriate and effective response to the challenges facing these two groups of ‘gig’ workers.

    Please see the full report, “A Better Future for Self-Employment: How is it changing, and how can ‘gig’ work be regulated?,” by David Peetz, Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow at the Centre for Future Work.

    The post A Better Future for Self-Employment appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Short Changed: Unpaid Overtime (GHOTD 2023)

    Following the disruptions of the COVID pandemic and historic falls in real wages over recent years, 2023’s stronger labour market conditions should benefit many workers. Wages have risen, labour force participation is relatively high and unemployment is low. With the introduction of the Government’s 2022 industrial relations reforms, workers are in a better position to bargain, as shown in recent bargaining outcomes and improving wages growth. However, wages are not keeping up with prices, inflation is high and, for many workers, conditions of work are far from satisfactory.

    As this year’s GHOTD report shows, significant problems of overwork and underemployment co-exist, affecting many workers across all industries, occupations and age groups. Underemployment particularly affects workers in casual, temporary and other forms of insecure work, and it particularly affects workers in lower-paid roles. Women, younger workers, older workers and services workers are over-represented among those affected. At the same time long hours and overwork remain a problem, especially for full-time workers.

    The post Short Changed appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.