My Blog

Tag: Unions & Collective Bargaining

  • 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.

  • Fixing the work and care crisis means tackling insecure and unpredictable work

    The Fair Work Commission is examining how to reduce insecurity and unpredictability in part-time and casual work to help employees better balance work and care.

    The Commission is reviewing modern awards that set out terms and conditions of employment for many working Australians to consider how workplace relations settings in awards impact on work and care. This follows a 2023 finding by the Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Work and Care last year that there is a “work and care crisis”.

    The Select Committee’s final report noted “too many Australians are working in conditions that lack predictable hours and thus pay”, making it difficult to manage their care responsibilities with paid work.

    Insufficient income to meet family needs, inability to plan, inability to access suitable care, high stress levels and lack of time for life are some of the negative impacts of insecure and unpredictable part-time and casual work for workers with caring responsibilities.

    Women are overrepresented in part-time and casual jobs, as they continue to provide most unpaid care for children, elderly parents, and sick or disabled family members. Among women, casual employment is most common among 15 to 34 year-olds, while for men it is highest among those aged 65 years and older. Women’s casual employment is linked to child-rearing.

    Pay rates in casual jobs are often lower than for employees in equivalent permanent part-time and full-time jobs, despite casual loadings. Underemployment is also high and unpredictable working hours are common among casual and part-time employees, including in services sectors such as retail and care. In both sectors, insecure casual jobs provide workers with very little control over their work hours. Lack of control over hours is often a feature of permanent part-time jobs as well as casual jobs

    In a job with unpredictable hours it can be extremely difficult to organise and manage the costs of care. For example, for parents, uncertainty of working hours and income can make access to reliable and affordable childcare impossible. Unpredictable short-hours rosters can make it barely worth working at all as income may not cover the costs of formal childcare.

    Good quality, secure part-time jobs have long been regarded as essential for greater gender equality in employment, including as part-time jobs can support better sharing of care among men and women. However, the expansion of part-time work in the Australian economy since the 1980s has been an expansion of casual and part-time jobs that are highly insecure, often low-paid and with poorer conditions, protections and entitlements than most full-time jobs.

    It is possible to make casual and part-time jobs more secure and predictable. The Fair Work Commission’s analysis of industrial awards shows that there are many provisions in awards applying to part-time and casual employment that contribute to insecurity and lack of predictability. Award provisions include, for example, short minimum payments periods, broken shifts, poor guarantees around minimum and regular hours of work, little or no payment for travel time between different work locations, little or no notice of roster changes and poor compensation for being on-call.

    Secure work and a living wage are fundamental to good work and care arrangements. Secure work doesn’t just mean ongoing work or protection from unfair dismissal. Secure work entails adequate and predictable work hours, reasonable flexibility of working time, compensation for unsocial hours, safety at work and access to union representation.

    Worker-carers should also have rights to carer’s leave and personal leave, regardless of their employment arrangements. Systems of portable leave entitlements could help all workers manage care and work at all stages of their working lives. These and other leave entitlements would have the benefit of supporting a better sharing of care.

    The Fair Work Commission’s will complete its review in the middle of 2024. It is to be hoped that this leads to improved working conditions for worker carers, enabling men and women to care and work without paying the price through job insecurity.

    The post Fixing the work and care crisis means tackling insecure and unpredictable work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians

    The Commission today announced rises between 2 and 13.5 per cent for aged care workers from July 2024.

    “Today’s decision is crucial to supporting safe and quality care for elderly Australians, and the sustainability of the aged care workforce,” said Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

    “For too long, aged care work has been undervalued and low paid. The Fair Work Commission’s decision to award additional pay rises, on top of an interim 15 per cent wage rise, is vital to fixing this.

    “The introduction of a new classification structure will also provide the basis for the ongoing recognition and valuation of aged care work.

    “It’s essential the federal government commits to fully funding the additional increases of up to 13.5 per cent from the start of the next financial year.”

    “The exclusion of indirect care workers from today’s decision is a lost opportunity to support the lowest paid workers.”

    The post Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • On International Women’s Day: How the Fair Work Commission Can Really Take On the Gender Pay Gap

    This International Women’s Day, it is time to call on Australia’s workplace umpire, the Fair Work Commission, to finally close the gender pay gap.

    Half a century after the commission’s predecessor granted women “equal pay for equal work” in a landmark case in 1969, the gap remains between 12% and 21%.

    Amendments to the Fair Work Act by the incoming Labor government in 2022 gave it new tools to close the gap by addressing the undervaluation of work in traditionally female-dominated occupations.

    If it uses these tools to their full potential, 2024 will be a landmark year in the genuine achievement of equal pay for equal work.

    What we’ve been doing hasn’t much worked

    Traditionally in Australia, addressing gender-based undervaluation has relied on two approaches.

    The first has been to argue the business case for gender equality – convincing employers they’ll be rewarded for “doing the right thing”.

    The second has been to bring equal pay cases to tribunals.

    Unfortunately, neither approach has been successful. In particular, pushing for equal remuneration through tribunals has been time-consuming and expensive.

    These tribunals, historically working on models of male full-time wage earners, have struggled to understand the undervaluation of work performed predominantly by women.

    The commission’s new tools

    The commission’s act has been rewritten to require it “to promote job security and gender equality.”
    It also has the power to make equal remuneration orders either on its own initiative or on application in order to bring about equal pay for work of equal or comparable value.

    A further new development is the establishment of expert panels to assist in gender-related cases. Advice from gender experts should assist in overcoming historical gender biases in commission decisions.

    Perhaps the most promising tool is the change to the commission’s modern awards objective, which requires it to eliminate gender-based undervaluation of work and provide workplace conditions that facilitate women’s full economic participation each time it reviews an award.

    Among other things, this requirement is likely to result in provisions that ensure part-time work is treated equally to full-time work and ensure a better balance between work and caring responsibilities.

    Amending awards is likely to be particularly important for women given that almost three in five of the workers on awards are women. Men are mainly on negotiated agreements.

    If the commission wanted to, it could hold a wide-ranging inquiry into the many factors that have contributed to gender-based undervaluation of women’s work.

    It could also review entire industries and occupations that are female-dominated, upgrading multiple awards at the same time. This would avoid lengthy and costly reviews of individual awards.

    What’s likely in 2024

    The Fair Work Commission’s resolve to make lasting change will be tested by several matters currently before it.

    The commission is due to issue its final decision in the case lodged by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the Health Services Union, and the United Workers Union on the value of the work done by workers in aged care.

    An initial interim decision delivered in 2022 awarded some – but not all – of these workers a 15% increase, finding that work in feminised industries had been historically undervalued and the reason for that undervaluation is likely to be gender-based”.

    Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke backed the decision, saying it was merely the “first step”.

    Another application, for nurses and midwives outside of aged care, was lodged by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation in February this year.

    The commission has already started the process of grappling with gender-based undervaluation in modern awards, commissioning research that documents the segregation of women and men into different occupations and industries.

    Further research documenting the history of a select group of female-dominated modern awards and identifying the extent to which common elements indicate gender-based undervaluation, is due to be released in April.

    It will feed into the annual wage review due by the middle of the year.

    How to be bold

    Gender-based undervaluation of women’s work won’t be eradicated by incremental adjustments.

    Here are three bold steps the commission could take:

    • grant a minimum interim 12% increase (one estimate of Australia’s national gender pay gap) across the board for female-dominated awards in this year’s annual wage review
    • develop new systems for classifying work and ascribing work value, breaking with the previous standards built around skills and qualifications in male dominated occupations
    • better consider the uneven bargaining power in industries such as nursing where governments fund care work and try to restrain costs.

    The changes to the Fair Work Act that allow multi-employer bargaining are a start, but unlikely alone to correct the undervaluation of women’s work.

    In female-dominated industries where collective bargaining is non-existent or ineffective, the commission should step in and further increase wages.

    The Fair Work Commission has been given the tools. This should be the year it applies them.

    The post On International Women’s Day: How the Fair Work Commission Can Really Take On the Gender Pay Gap appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • More loopholes to close on insecure work and a new right to disconnect from work

    This means Australia’s employment laws will be further amended to tackle the problems of insecurity and low pay, with the changes targeting casual employment and gig platform work arrangements. The package also includes a new right for employees to disconnect from work outside their paid work time.

    A new definition of casual employment will be included in the Fair Work Act, making it harder for employers to classify their employees as casual when, in reality, the employees are required to work regular hours for a continuing and indefinite period. The legislation also establishes a new pathway for casual employees to seek permanent status.

    The casual employment changes should go some way to stopping and reversing the growth of so-called ‘permanent casual’ arrangements, which have become widespread. Workers in these arrangements are actually in permanent jobs while they are given casual employment status.

    Casual employment means lower pay, little or no job security and no right to paid leave. Lack of employment security in casual employment creates all sorts of other insecurities for workers, such as limiting access to finance, secure housing and childcare. According to government estimates, there are over 850,000 casual employees who could be eligible to seek permanency under the legislation.

    Gig worker or ‘employee-like’ reforms in the Closing Loopholes package aim to address low pay and poor working conditions experienced by workers on digital platforms who are engaged as independent contractors, are low-paid and/or have very limited bargaining power, such as delivery riders and rideshare drivers. The Fair Work Commission will now be able to make orders for minimum standards for these digital platform workers.

    This ‘employee-like’ reforms extend the scope of Australia’s Fair Work Act to provide protections and rights to vulnerable workers, who are not employees. This should prove to be an effective response to the challenges facing vulnerable ‘gig workers as argued by the Centre for Future Work’s David Peetz has argued in a recent Centre for Future Work report on self-employment.

    Closing Loopholes also includes a ‘right to disconnect’ from work, an initiative of the Greens, included to get the minor party’s support for the bill. In future, employees will have a right to refuse to respond to contact from their employers outside their scheduled hours if the contact is unreasonable.

    Go Home on Time Day research conducted in 2022 by the Centre for Future Work found that 8 out of every 10 workers supported a right to disconnect. This level of support is not surprising, given the amount of unpaid overtime workers are doing. In 2023, the Centre for Future Work reported employees are, on average, working 5.8 hours a week — total of 280 hours, or 7 weeks, a year of unpaid overtime per employee.

    The new right to disconnect is a practical solution for many employees that should also assist to shift cultures in workplaces where reliance on unpaid overtime has become the norm.

    Some employer groups are arguing the Closing Loopholes legislation ‘goes too far’. To the contrary, if there is a weakness in the legislation, it is that it does not always account for power imbalances in the relationship between employees and employers. And this may limit the effectiveness of the some of the new provisions.

    As a result of amendments put forward by independent David Pocock and the two Jacqui Lambie Network senators in response to employers’ concerns, a number of the bill’s provisions will be weaker in the final legislation than they were in the government’s original bill.

    The amended bill passed by the Senate yesterday provides greater scope for employers to refuse casual employees’ requests for permanent status. The proposed prohibition on employers unreasonably contacting employees out of work hours has been removed. In the amended bill the prohibition is now on employers punishing employees who refuse to monitor and respond to unreasonable contact.

    The Closing Loopholes part 2 reforms are welcome changes that will limit some of the damage and disadvantage caused by insecure work and the encroachment of (unpaid) work into life outside work.

    The post More loopholes to close on insecure work … and a new right to disconnect from work appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Right to Disconnect Essential as Devices Intrude Into Workers Lives

    Australia’s Parliament is set to pass a new set of reforms to the Fair Work Act and other labour laws, that would enshrine certain protections for workers against being contacted or ordered to perform work outside of normal working hours. This “Right to Disconnect” is an important step in limiting the steady encroachment of work demands into leisure, family, and recreation time. In the most recent edition of our Centre’s annual Go Home on Time Day survey, the average Australian worker performed 280 hours of unpaid time per year — and that time is worth a staggering $130 billion in annual lost incomes. The ubiquitous use of digital devices (from email to texts to WhatsApp) is facilitating this expansion of time theft.

    Dr Chris F. Wright is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney, and also a member of the Centre for Future Work’s Advisory Committee. He has prepared this excellent summary (originally published in The Conversation) about the benefits of a right to disconnect. Please also see our 2022 report, Call Me Maybe (Not!), by Eliza Littleton and Lily Raynes, on examples of enshrining the right from other countries, and survey evidence showing Australians’ strong support for the idea.

    Smartphones Mean We’re Always Available to our Bosses. ‘Right to Disconnect’ Laws are a Necessary Fix

    by Dr Chris F. Wright

    Australian workers are set to have the right to disconnect from their workplaces once they clock off for the day.

    This will “empower workers to ignore work calls and emails after hours [from their employers], where those demands are unreasonable”, according to Greens Senator Barbara Pocock who has been driving the change.

    Last week, the Senate committee reviewing the “Closing Loopholes” amendments to the Fair Work Act recommended introducing a right to disconnect to support “the development of clear expectations about contact and availability in workplaces”. On Wednesday, the Albanese government indicated it supported the amendment.

    Why a right to disconnect is needed

    Last year, the Senate Select Committee on Work and Care drew attention to “availability creep” where employees are increasingly expected to complete work outside of work hours.

    Smartphones have made it easier for managers to contact workers any time. The shift to remote working during the COVID pandemic caused the boundaries between work and personal life to disintegrate further.

    According to a 2022 report by the Centre for Future Work, 71% of workers surveyed had worked outside their scheduled work hours often due to overwork or pressure from managers.

    This led to increased tiredness, stress or anxiety for about one-third of workers surveyed, disrupted relationships and personal lives for more than one-quarter, and lower job motivation and satisfaction for around one-fifth.

    Parliamentary inquiries have highlighted the negative consequences of working outside scheduled hours for mental and physical health, productivity and turnover.

    Availability creep has led to significant unpaid overtime which “takes workers away from a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”.

    The impacts are especially acute for certain groups of workers. Those on insecure contracts lack the power to resist availability creep. Those with unpaid care responsibilities are likely to experience intensified work/life balance.

    “Roster justice”

    The right to disconnect provides a solution to these challenges. The Senate select committee on work and care found such a right can provide workers with “roster justice” by giving more certainty over their working hours.

    Many countries in Europe, Asia, North America and South America have already established laws or regulations limiting employers contacting workers outside work hours.

    At least 56 enterprise agreements currently operating in Australia provide a right to disconnect. This includes agreements covering teachers, police officers and various banks and financial institutions.

    Industrial Relations Minister Tony Burke has indicated the right to disconnect legislation will provide employers with “reasonable grounds” to contact their employees outside work hours. This might include calling employees to see if they can fill a shift.

    If enterprise agreements with existing right to disconnect clauses are an indication, the Fair Work Commission will probably be asked to determine what contact outside of work hours is deemed “reasonable”. This approach seems sensible given the long tradition of the commission being asked to rule on what’s “reasonable” in other areas of employment law.

    If an employer “unreasonably” expects employees to perform unpaid work outside of normal hours the commission may be empowered to impose a “stop order” — and potentially fines — to prevent the employer from contacting employees outside hours according to Tony Burke.

    Unions including those representing teachers and police officers support a right to disconnect. According to the Police Federation of Australia:

    Not only do the police see that trauma, deal with the families’ trauma, deal with their colleagues’ trauma, have to investigate, have to go to court, and get media attention but they also have to go home and deal with their families […] The right to disconnect gives those officers that little bit of breathing space.

    Employment law experts and human resource specialists also believe there is a strong case for such a right given the negative impacts of availability creep on worker well being.

    Employer associations are less supportive. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) told a recent Senate inquiry a right to disconnect would be “a blunt instrument which will do more harm than good, including for employees”. They claim employers will be less accommodating of employee requests for flexible work arrangements during normal work hours if contact outside these hours is no longer allowed.

    A banana republic?

    According to ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar, a right to disconnect would be “the final step in Australia becoming a banana republic”.

    But it must be remembered that workers effectively had the right to disconnect before the smartphone. Such a protection needs to be explicit now technology has eroded the once-firm boundaries between work and home.

    As the nature of work and employer practices change, it’s essential for employment regulations to respond accordingly. Having a right to disconnect to protect workers from employers encroaching upon their free-time is a necessary response.

    The post “Right to Disconnect” Essential as Devices Intrude Into Workers’ Lives 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.

  • Paying for Collective Bargaining

    New provisions contained in both the Secure Jobs Better Pay (2022) and Closing Loopholes (2023) legislation will expand the scope for collective bargaining (including more opportunities for bargaining at a multi-employer level), make it harder for employers to evade collective bargaining, and empower union delegates to fulfil their responsibilities in workplaces to administer and enforce collective agreements.

    However, one important challenge for Australia’s collective bargaining system, that has not been addressed by these reforms, is how to pay for collective bargaining. The infrastructure of representation, bargaining, implementation and enforcement requires ongoing commitment of people and resources, from both the union and the employer sides of the relationship.

    In Australia at present, the workers’ side of this infrastructure is dependent on voluntary union dues contributed by individuals who choose to join a union in their industry. No collective system of union security or dues collection (such as closed or agency shop arrangements, dues preferences, or bargaining fees) are presently allowed under Australian law. Moreover, Australian law fully protects the ability of individual workers to ‘free ride’ on the benefits and protections negotiated by unions in their workplace: every provision of a collective agreement must be provided to all workers in a defined bargaining unit (whether they are members of the union that negotiated them or not). From a perspective of narrow self-interest, this system discourages union membership — and in turn starves the collective bargaining system of the resources it needs to be viable.

    In this article published in The Conversation, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discusses the nature of this ‘free rider problem,’ and highlights how the treatment of this problem varies wildly between business and union applications. Legal contracts which enforce collective revenue solutions to free-rider problems are common and fully acceptable in many common applications: such as residential strata arrangements, the governance of joint stock corporations, and even government tax collections. Where unions are concerned, however, the law prevents workers from making and enforcing a collective decision to jointly fund the apparatus of collective bargaining, to the shared detriment of workers who consequently cannot exercise collective bargaining power to improve their employment relationship. The rhetoric of ‘individual choice’ is applied selectively to industrial relations; no owner of a strata unit, or shareholder in a corporation, has the ‘free choice’ to refuse to pay the normal costs and obligations associated with those arrangements.

    Australia’s restrictions on union security and collective dues arrangements are uniquely restrictive among industrial countries; they are similar to the rules in so-called ‘right-to-work’ states in the U.S., where union representation has fallen to the low single digits. Free riding has been an important factor in the long-term erosion of union density in Australia: most recent data indicates that just 12.5% of employees in Australia are presently union members. Workers with greater awareness of the importance of collective bargaining to their long-term prosperity will support their unions, even though they are legally entitled to all the benefits of a collective agreement whether they join or not. But the current laws discourage this act of collective solidarity, and collective bargaining has been eroding accordingly. At present just 15% of workers in Australia are covered by an active enterprise agreement (and less than 10% in the private sector). The erosion of collective bargaining has contributed to wage stagnation, growing inequality, and job insecurity.

    Dr Stanford’s Conversation article has been selected for inclusion in the new anthology, 2023: A Year of Consequence, published by Thames & Hudson, and edited by Justin Bergman (International Editor of The Conversation). The book contains several essays published by The Conversation in 2023 that are judged to have contributed most to public policy dialogue in Australia over the past year.

    Further information on the extent and consequences of free riding in Australian collective bargaining, and five different strategies for addressing this problem (based on the variety of policies implemented in other industrial countries where collective bargaining is better-resourced, and hence stronger and more effective), are provided in Dr Stanford’s recent scholarly article in Labour and Industry, titled “International approaches to solving the ‘free rider’ problem in industrial relations.” Click below to see the full article.

    The post Paying for Collective Bargaining appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Solidarity Research for Union Renewal

    • Tuesday 30 January 2024
    • 5:30pm for 6pm start
    • UnionsWA, CSA Building, 445 Hay Street Perth

    To coincide with the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) holding its 2024 conference in Perth, the Centre for Future Work and Unions WA are pleased to present a unique and important event for union members, supporters, and activists.

    ‘Solidarity research for Union Renewal’ brings together cutting-edge researchers and unionists to share their knowledge and wisdom about renewing unions and building solidarity between all workers. Find out how:

    • Canadian Health Workers restored their jobs to the public sector
    • African unions have fought back against Multinationals
    • Australian unions are organising and advocating for migrant workers

    The evening will be chaired by Professor Emeritus David Peetz, the Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow at the Centre for Future Work – who will also be presenting his research on Developing Union Delegates

    This event is FREE, with refreshments, but we need you to register for a ticket here: https://www.unionswa.com.au/solidarity_research_for_union_renewal.

    And here is the full program of speakers and topics.

    See you in Perth!

    The post Solidarity Research for Union Renewal appeared first on The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work.

  • Submission: Fair Work Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023

    Submission supporting the Closing Loopholes Bill 2023.

    Authors: Macdonald, Peetz, Stanford

    Download the full report.