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  • Technology, Standards and Democracy

    Gig Economy, Future of Work

    Technology, Standards and Democracy

    Submission to Select Committee on the Impact of Technological Change on the Future of Work and Workers in New South Wales
    by Dan Nahum and Jim Stanford

    Authors

    Dan Nahum

    Economist

    Jim Stanford

    Workers in most industries and occupations worry about the effects of accelerating technological change on their employment security and prospects. New digital technologies are being applied to an increasingly diverse and complex array of tasks and jobs – including artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies which can exercise judgment and decision-making powers. Some studies suggest that as many as half of all jobs may be highly vulnerable to automation and computerisation in coming decades. The NSW Legislative Council has established a Select Committee to examine the impact of technological and other change on the future of work in NSW. The Centre for Future Work has lodged a submission.

    Concerns about technological unemployment are not new. Workers have long worried what will happen to their jobs when machines can do the work faster, cheaper, or better. But the historical record shows that technology has not produced mass unemployment or impoverishment – although dislocation and adjustment to technological change can be severe for some groups of workers, and some regions. The impacts of technology are always filtered through social and political processes; competing sectors of society naturally endeavour to protect and advance their own respective interests, as technology evolves. Will technology be used to enhance mass living standards and make work more efficient and pleasant? Or will it be used to enrich a small elite, while undermining the economic well-being and political rights of the majority? The answer depends on how technology is implemented, managed, and controlled, and whose interests prevail as the process unfolds.

    Employers tend to implement particular kinds of technology, in specific ways, to enhance their power and profits: not just to boost output, but also to intensify work effort, monitor and discipline workers, and restructure the terms of employment. These negative trends are not inherent outcomes of technology itself. Rather, they are the result of power imbalances in employment relationships, in the context of an economy that is shaped and directed by the profit-maximising actions of private firms.

    In our submission, we discuss several reasons why the impact of technology on both the quantity and quality of future employment is indeterminate, and highly dependent on the policy choices that are made as the process of labour market evolution unfolds.  While some workers will face heightened risk of job loss due to new technology, we nevertheless firmly reject the notion that work in general can somehow ‘disappear’ – even in sectors which seem ripe for the application of labour-saving or labour-replacing technologies. And we reject the implication that workers will somehow be ‘disposable’ in a brave new automated world. The reality is that productive human labour, broadly defined, is still the driving force behind all production and value-add. This is true even in an economy utilising automation and other technology-intensive methods of production. We must be aware of the risks and challenges posed to workers by accelerating technological change, but without resigning ourselves to a dystopic high-tech future in which workers have no power, no agency, and no security. Instead, our response to the challenges posed by technology can be grounded in a complete and balanced assessment of the threats and opportunities associated with new technology.

    The submission is organised as follows:

    • ‘Technology and Work: What changes are at play?’ identifies changes – and continuities – in the world of work in which technology plays a role.
      • This includes a subsection, ‘Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace’ on the incidence of this type of surveillance by employers in – and beyond – the workplace, using results from the Centre for Future Work’s 2018 survey on the incidence and impacts of such surveillance.
    • ‘The Macroeconomic and Social Context for Technological Change’ considers the broader political-economic factors contributing to how we use and regard technology in the workplace. Many of the changes often ascribed to technology are better identified as social or political matters, mediated through or exacerbated by technology.
    • ‘Technology and the Quantity of Work’ discusses technology’s impacts on the quantity of work available. We note that the uptake of technology by employers is in fact surprisingly lower than what many analysts have predicted – further evidence that technology’s effects on the work of work are mediated by social and political factors.
    • ‘The Technology of Production and the Organisation of Work’ further teases apart the distinction between technology as a discrete set of tools, and the social organisation of work, such as precarious employment. There is an interaction and overlap between the two but consideration of the set of challenges under this Select Committee’s Terms of Reference is lent more rigour by identifying the distinctions, too.
    • We present recommendations seeking to support the goal of maximising the benefits of technology, while reducing and ameliorating its social costs.
    • The submission concludes by reiterating that it is not technology specifically, but rather our systems of laws, institutions and social expectations overall that will determine the future of work.

    We are hopeful that this Select Committee can contribute to developing a strategic understanding of, and leading legal framework for, changes in the nature of work and the labour market. These issues have increased in importance in the context of the economic crisis, and the resulting weakness in the labour market, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.



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

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

    by Alison Pennington

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    With millions facing unemployment and crisis-accelerated job transitions, public investment in the skills and earning capabilities of Australians will be critical to our post-pandemic 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.


    Related documents



    Presentation slides

    Related research



    An Investment in Productivity and Inclusion



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  • An Investment in Productivity and Inclusion

    Education & Training

    An Investment in Productivity and Inclusion

    The Economic and Social Benefits of the TAFE System
    by Alison Pennington

    Author

    Alison Pennington

    Senior Economist

    Media release



    TAFE system supports $92.5 billion in annual economic benefits

    The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in an era of unprecedented disruption and transition. Increased public investment in the skills and earning capabilities of Australians will be critical to our post-pandemic recovery.

    This report from the Centre for Future Work finds despite chronic underfunding and failed market-led VET policies, Australia’s historic investment in the TAFE system continues to generate an enormous and ongoing dividend to the Australian economy. The TAFE system supports $92.5 billion in annual economic benefits through the direct operation of TAFE institutes, higher incomes and productivity generated by the TAFE-credentialed workforce, and reduced social benefits costs.

    “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,” said Alison Pennington, Senior Economist with the Centre for Future Work and author of the report.

    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.

    “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.”

    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.

    “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.”



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  • Victorian Inquiry Offers Novel Routes to Regulating Gig Work

    Victorian Inquiry Offers Novel Routes to Regulating Gig Work

    by Alison Pennington

    Alison Pennington

    Senior Economist

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    Findings from a landmark inquiry commissioned by the Andrews Victorian government into the work conditions in the “on demand” (gig) economy have been released. 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.

    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.


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    Centre For Future Work to evolve into standalone entity

    The Centre for Future Work was established by the Australia Institute in 2016 to conduct and publish progressive economic research on work, employment, and labour markets. Supported by the Australian Union movement, the centre produced cutting edge research and led the national conversation on economic issues facing working people: including the future of jobs, wages

  • Austerity Threatens Women’s Access to Paid Work

    Austerity Threatens Women’s Access to Paid Work

    by Alison Pennington in The New Daily

    Alison Pennington

    Senior Economist

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    Originally published in The New Daily on June 25, 2020

    Women have suffered the worst labour market impacts since the shutdowns. Gender-unequal impacts have been due to women’s greater exposure to customer-facing industries shut down first by public health orders, higher employment intensity in insecure and part-time positions, and an increased caring burden unmet by the state. But instead of providing countervailing support, the federal government is accelerating women’s work crisis.

    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.


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    Commonwealth Budget 2025-2026: Our analysis

    by Fiona Macdonald

    The Centre for Future Work’s research team has analysed the Commonwealth Government’s budget, focusing on key areas for workers, working lives, and labour markets. As expected with a Federal election looming, the budget is not a horror one of austerity. However, the 2025-2026 budget is characterised by the absence of any significant initiatives. There is

  • Participating in growth: Free childcare and increased participation

    Education & Training

    Participating in growth: Free childcare and increased participation

    by Matt Grudnoff and Richard Denniss

    Authors

    Matt Grudnoff

    Senior Economist

    Richard Denniss

    co-Chief Executive Officer

    The provision of free childcare provides the rarest of economic policy opportunities – it’s both an effective form of fiscal stimulus in the short term and has the capacity to boost the long-term participation rate and, in turn, the long run rate of economic growth.



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

    Repairing Universities & Skills Key to Meeting COVID-Era Challenges

    by Alison Pennington

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    Training must play a vital role in reorienting the economy after the pandemic, supporting workers training for new jobs including millions of young people entering a depressed labour market without concrete pathways to work. But what kind of jobs will we be doing in 2040? And how prepared is Australia’s skills system (and universities specifically) to play this important role now?

    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.


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    Centre For Future Work to evolve into standalone entity

    The Centre for Future Work was established by the Australia Institute in 2016 to conduct and publish progressive economic research on work, employment, and labour markets. Supported by the Australian Union movement, the centre produced cutting edge research and led the national conversation on economic issues facing working people: including the future of jobs, wages

  • Unleashing a National Reconstruction Plan Fit for Our Era

    Unleashing a National Reconstruction Plan Fit for Our Era

    by Alison Pennington in Newcastle Herald

    Alison Pennington

    Senior Economist

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    Originally published in Newcastle Herald on June 9, 2020

    Our nation is confronting the most significant economic challenge in nearly a century. Australia’s own experience of long-term, sustained public investment during post-war reconstruction shows direct tools of government planning and investment will be essential to our recovery today. Yet 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.”

    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.


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    Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs

    by Charlie Joyce

    Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs As Australia’s federal election campaign has finally begun, opposition leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to spend hundreds of billions in public money to build seven nuclear power plants across the country has been carefully scrutinized. The technological unfeasibility, staggering cost, and scant detail of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal have

    Centre For Future Work to evolve into standalone entity

    The Centre for Future Work was established by the Australia Institute in 2016 to conduct and publish progressive economic research on work, employment, and labour markets. Supported by the Australian Union movement, the centre produced cutting edge research and led the national conversation on economic issues facing working people: including the future of jobs, wages

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

    Australia Needs Universal Paid Sick Leave To Get Through the Pandemic

    by Alison Pennington

    Alison Pennington

    Senior Economist

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    Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy recently issued a directive that going to work with the ‘sniffles’ is ‘off the agenda for every Australian in the foreseeable future.’ But with millions of workers without access to paid sick leave, government plans to lift restrictions on economic activity could risk dangerous and costly outbreaks. 

    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.


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  • Powering Onwards

    Environment & Jobs, Industry & Sector Policies

    Powering Onwards

    Australia’s Opportunity to Reinvigorate Manufacturing through Renewable Energy
    by Dan Nahum

    Author

    Dan Nahum

    Economist

    With disruptions in international supply chains for essential products (like medical equipment and supplies) disrupted in the current COVID pandemic, Australians have a new appreciation for the importance of retaining a flexible, high-quality, domestic manufacturing capacity. And the ongoing transformation of Australia’s energy industry, with rapid expansion of renewable energy sources, would add momentum to the renaissance of Australian manufacturing.

    That is the conclusion of a new study written by Dan Nahum, Economist at the Centre for Future Work.

    The report notes that power from renewable energy sources (both solar and wind) are now substantially less expensive than fossil fuel generation on a full lifecycle cost basis – and moreover, that cost advantage will grow in coming years. The report simulates the annual power cost savings to manufacturers if the sector’s current use of fossil fuel-fired power was fully transferred to renewables (as existing generating facilities are retired and replaced). The sector’s power bill would decline by an estimated $1.6 billion per year, or 23%, compared to the current fuel mix. The saving swells to $2.2 billion (in constant dollars) by 2050.

    The paper also provides numerous examples of manufacturing industries which are already making use of renewable power to capture cost and reliability advantages, as well as various manufacturing industries which hold great potential to supply Australian-made manufactured inputs to renewable power systems (from lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles, to public transportation rolling stock, to green hydrogen). The paper reports international evidence showing that companies which have reduced greenhouse gas emissions more successfully have attained greater success in manufacturing output and exports than Australia.

    The paper also shows there is a strong majority overlap between Australians regarding the manufacturing sector as important, and those in favour of expanding the use of renewables, making this a viable dual public policy goal for governments.



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