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  • Submission to the Reserve Bank Reforms 2023 bill

    Macroeconomics

    Submission to the Reserve Bank Reforms 2023 bill

    by Matt Grudnoff

    Author

    Matt Grudnoff

    Senior Economist

    The Australia Institute argued that the RBA review’s proposal to remove the Australian Parliament’s power to override the RBA on monetary policy is wrong.

    In Australia’s democracy ultimate responsibility for something as important as monetary policy should rest with the parliament. This is because the Australian Parliament is ultimately responsible to the Australian people, while the RBA board is not.



    Full Submission




    Factsheet
    Chalmers is right, the RBA has smashed the economy

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  • Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians

    Aged care wage rise decision crucial for elderly Australians

    by Fiona Macdonald

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    The Australia Institute says wage rises for aged care workers will improve the lives of elderly Australians after a crucial Fair Work Commission decision.

    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.”


  • Most Coalition voters back right to disconnect

    Most Coalition voters back right to disconnect

    by Fiona Macdonald

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    Two-thirds of Coalition voters back newly legislated protections for employees’ right to disconnect from emails and calls outside of work, new research from the Australia Institute shows.

    It comes as the federal opposition pushes amendments to the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2024 – subject to a Senate inquiry due to be handed down today – to scrap the right. The Coalition has vowed to overturn the legislation if it wins government.

    Key findings: 

    The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work surveyed 1,017 Australians about the right to disconnect in late January, before the bill passed parliament. 

    • Three-quarters (76%) supported the federal government legislating a right to disconnect, while 11% were opposed.
    • Support for legislating a right to disconnect was high across the political spectrum.
    • Greens (90%) and Labor voters (83%) were the most supportive. This was followed by two-thirds of Coalition voters (66%). Just 18% of Coalition voters opposed it.
    • Three in four ‘independent/other’ voters (77%) and 61% of One Nation voters supported legislating a right to disconnect.

    “The opposition appears determined to remain out of touch with its own voters by pledging to roll back the very policies they support,” said Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director, Industrial and Social at the Centre for Future Work.

    “The Coalition joined the business lobby in claiming the right to disconnect would cause the sky to fall in. They were wrong. Instead, this survey finds most Australians across the political spectrum back the legislation to stop work encroaching into their personal and family time.

    “We know that unpaid overtime is endemic. Our research shows employers are stealing more than 280 hours a year from their workers. This average employee loses $11,055 a year to unpaid overtime.

    “The implementation of the right to disconnect is a commonsense step towards rectifying this exploitative imbalance.”

    The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee is due to report on the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2024 today.


    Related research



    Polling – Right to Disconnect



    Full report



    Disclosure Statement

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

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

    by Lisa Heap in The Conversation

    Lisa Heap

    Senior Researcher

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    Originally published in The Conversation on March 8, 2024

    On occasion of International Women’s Day, the Centre for Future Work’s Senior Researcher Lisa Heap reviews the opportunities to use recent industrial relations reforms to more ambitiously address Australia’s 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.


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  • The gas industry is laughing at us as they make more money but not more tax

    The gas industry is laughing at us as they make more money but not more tax

    by Greg Jericho in The Guardian

    Greg Jericho

    Chief Economist

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    Originally published in The Guardian on February 29, 2024

    Despite soaring production and revenues the gas industry is not paying more tax

    Australia produces more than six times the amount of gas needed to supply our manufacturing industry, power stations and homes. But more than 80% either heads overseas as LNG exports or is used to convert natural gas into LNG:

    We export much more gas than we used to. In the 2000s we exported around 14m tonnes of LNG a year. Now, due to the opening of the Gladstone LNG terminal, we send 83mt overseas – the second most of any nation.

    But more production and more revenue has not led to more tax, even though the petroleum resources rent tax (PRRT) is in place to supposedly raise revenue from windfall profits such as those generated by the gas industry after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    When Australia exported 15.4mt of LNG in 2008-09, the government raised $2.2bn in PRRT. In 2022-23, exports had increased 437% to 83mt but PRRT revenue was up just 7% to $2.4bn.

    Did gas suddenly become unprofitable?

    No, the problem is that the PRRT is open to manipulation that enables companies to use costs to reduce their PRRT liability such that it appears they are never making “super profits”.

    In last year’s budget, the government finally proposed limiting the deductions to the PRRT in any year to 90% of LNG project revenues. Alas that proposal also had a punchline. The government announced the changes would raise an extra $2.4bn in PRRT over the next four years. That was roughly a 30% increase in tax.

    Thirty per cent!

    You would think the gas industry would launch the mother of all campaigns against it. But no. They loved it.

    The day it was announced the gas industry peak body recommended bipartisan support as the changes “would see more revenue collected earlier”. The key word was “earlier”. It won’t raise more tax; it just moves some tax from later to earlier.

    But it won’t even do that.

    In December’s midyear economic and fiscal outlook, the government announced it was revising down its estimate of how much PRRT would be raised over the next four years.

    How much did it reduce its estimate by?

    You guessed it: $2.4bn.

    We need to change the way the PRRT operates, we need to tax our gas more and we need to do it now.


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    Australia’s Gas Use On The Slide

    by Ketan Joshi

    The Federal Government has released a new report that includes projections of how much gas Australia is set to use over the coming decades. There is no ambiguity in its message: Australia reached peak gas years ago, and it’s all downhill from here:

    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

  • “Right to Disconnect” Essential as Devices Intrude Into Workers’ Lives

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

    Young woman using cell phone to send text message on social network at night. Closeup of hands with computer laptop in background

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    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.


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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

  • We Cannot Truly Value ‘Care’ Until Workers Using Digital Labour Platforms Get Fair Pay and Conditions

    We Cannot Truly Value ‘Care’ Until Workers Using Digital Labour Platforms Get Fair Pay and Conditions

    by Fiona Macdonald in Women’s Agenda

    Fiona Macdonald

    Acting Director, Centre for Future Work

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    Originally published in Women’s Agenda on January 23, 2024

    Unless minimum employment standards for care and support workers using digital labour platforms are guaranteed, decades of slow progress towards proper recognition of care work and equal pay for women could be undone.

    Australia risks returning to the days when the value of a female care worker’s effort and their working conditions were largely determined in private, informal relationships out of sight and out of the scope of regulation that protects most other workers.

    For most of the 20th Century, women workers providing care and assistance to people in private residences were explicitly excluded from the industrial relations system that ensured rights and standards, including minimum wages and employment conditions, for 90 per cent of Australian workers.

    Homecare and other social and community services workers were only recognised as workers at the end of the century, after long and enormously difficult struggles by women and their unions.

    Finally, in the 1990s, for the first time, care and support workers gained regulated minimum standards of pay and conditions. Previously, as unregulated workers, they had extremely low pay rates and some of the worst working conditions in Australia.

    Fast forward thirty years to 2024. The care and support workforce is still highly feminised. It is large and it is growing 3 times faster than other sectors in the Australian economy. Most care and support jobs are still relatively low-paid and insecure.

    Today, however, the need for fair pay, better quality jobs, and career paths for care and support workers has the attention of government and other policy makers. In the wake of the pandemic there is greater appreciation of how the quality of these jobs impacts on the quality of care and support for the aged and people with disability.

    And it is very clear that, if we are to successfully tackle Australia’s gender pay gap and women’s economic inequality, we must ensure better pay and career pathways for care and support workers.

    But now, digital or ‘gig’ labour platforms are undermining the slow progress that has been made towards proper recognition and valuing of care work. This is because most platforms, through which aged care and disability support workers connect with people requiring care and support, insist that workers are independent contractors.

    Platforms compete in the NDIS and aged care markets by using independent contractors to provide cheaper services, while other service providers directly employ workers. Platforms profit from avoiding the costs of employment, including superannuation, training and supervision. Platform workers have no minimum employment standards.

    Digital platform care and support workers have a lot in common with previous care and domestic workers who, for most of the 20th Century, were invisible and isolated, and struggled to have their labour recognised as work.

    Platform workers are without any rights to minimum rates of pay, working time standards, superannuation or other benefits and protections they would have as employees. They mostly perform their labour without peer support, organisational supervision and training, and they are cut off from opportunities for development and promotion.

    Opponents of employment standards for platform care and support workers don’t see it like this. They argue standards are not needed as workers are “entrepreneurs” who set their own rates, earn more than employees, enjoy the flexibility of working when and where they want, and are doing this work as a “side hustle” on top of more substantial jobs.

    None of this is true of the majority of care and support workers on platforms. Most (70 per cent) believe they are employees of the platform, even though they’re not. Even the platforms’ own data shows that workers from groups likely to be vulnerable to exploitation – migrants and younger workers – are over-represented on platforms. Many workers are paid below the relevant award minimum pay rate.

    It makes little sense to refer to jobs as side hustles when 4 out of 5 home and community-based care and support jobs (on and off platforms) are part-time, often short-hours jobs.

    Just because jobs are part-time, or a worker holds multiple jobs, doesn’t mean fair pay and working conditions don’t matter.

    For decades, women had to put up with undervalued work while employers, economists and public policy makers argued women worked in care jobs for love rather than money, and their earnings were not essential income. Present-day arguments opposing minimum standards are a little different, however, they would achieve the same end, perpetuating undervaluation and gender inequality.


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

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

    by Fiona Macdonald in The New Daily

    Fiona Macdonald

    Acting Director, Centre for Future Work

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    Originally published in The New Daily on December 17, 2023

    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.


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  • Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (More Support for Working Families) Bill 2023

    Gender at Work, Labour Standards & Workers’ Rights

    Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (More Support for Working Families) Bill 2023

    Paid Parental leave reform needs to go further to meet best practice standards
    by Fiona Macdonald and Alexia Adhikari

    Authors

    Fiona Macdonald

    Acting Director, Centre for Future Work

    Alexia Adhikari

    Postdoctoral Research Fellow

    This joint submission by the Centre for Future Work and the Nordic Policy Centre argues for immediate further reform to bring Australia’s Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme up to international best practice standards.

    In this submission Fiona Macdonald, Centre for Future Work Policy Director and Alexia Adhikari, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Australia Institute, argue that current reforms don’t go far enough and are being implemented too slowly. A proposed entitlement of 26 weeks PPL to be phased in by July 2026 is far less than the international best practice standard of 52 weeks. The two-week ‘use it or lose it’ component reserved for each parent, and which is vital to encouraging more fathers to take leave to care for babies, is too short. Parental leave pay is too low, contributing to women’s economic disadvantage and inequality.

    The submission recommends that the PPL scheme be improved and extended further, including by:

    • Bringing parental leave pay up to a full replacement wage level or to the average wage, whichever is the lesser amount, and including superannuation payments.
    • Bringing forward the extension of the PPL scheme to 26 weeks from 1 July 2024 instead of July 2026 and further extending the scheme through phasing in an entitlement of 52 weeks.
    • Extending to eight weeks the ‘use it or lose it’ component of PPL.



    Full submission

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  • Mid-Term Review of Albanese Government’s Labour Policy Reforms

    Labour Standards & Workers’ Rights, Unions & Collective Bargaining

    Mid-Term Review of Albanese Government’s Labour Policy Reforms

    Reforms will make a significant difference, but further progress needed
    by Greg Jericho, Charlie Joyce, Fiona Macdonald, David Peetz and Jim Stanford

    Authors

    Greg Jericho

    Chief Economist

    Charlie Joyce

    Researcher

    Fiona Macdonald

    Acting Director, Centre for Future Work

    David Peetz

    Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow

    Jim Stanford

    A review of the Albanese government’s labour and industrial relations reforms at the mid-point of its term in office concludes that the government deserves “positive marks” for several measures taken to strengthen collective bargaining and accelerate wage growth.

    That assessment is contained in an article contained in a new special issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE), evaluating the government’s record on a range of issues halfway through its term. The special issue of JAPE was published on 18 December, and was edited by Prof Emeritus Frank Stilwell at the University of Sydney.

    The article reviewing the government’s labour policies was co-authored by several staff at the Centre for Future Work, including Greg Jericho, Charlie Joyce, Fiona Macdonald, David Peetz, and Jim Stanford. It considers the impacts of several government initiatives, including:

    • Successive rounds of reforms to the Fair Work Act (including last year’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill, and this year’s Closing Loopholes legislation).
    • Several reforms to address gender inequality in workplaces.
    • A more ambitious approach to raising the national minimum wage.
    • Longer-run proposals for attaining full employment, described in the government’s recent White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities.

    The authors judge that the government’s labour reforms have achieved an “incremental but significant rebalancing of industrial relations.” They pointed to the acceleration of wage growth in Australia in the last year as evidence that workers have won important bargaining power. Wages are now growing at 4% year-over-year, according to the latest WPI data from the ABS — twice as fast as they did on average over the previous decade, which was marked by the slowest sustained wage growth in the postwar era.

    The authors caution, however, that additional reforms are necessary to reverse the erosion of collective bargaining coverage and union membership, and ensure that workers have the bargaining power to improve wages, job security and working conditions.

    “On the whole, the Albanese government has made cautious but useful progress on industrial relations and labour issues during its first year. However, it must be acknowledged that the overall labour relations regime in Australia remains heavily skewed in favour of employers,” the authors concluded.

    Please see the full article, “Labour Policy,” by Greg Jericho, Charlie Joyce, Fiona Macdonald, David Peetz and Jim Stanford, at the link below. Fiona Macdonald also authored a second article in the special issue, dealing with the government’s reforms to care policies. To see the full collection of articles in the special issue, visit the JAPE website.



    Full report

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