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  • Fels’ Review Confirms Corporate Practices As Key Drivers of Inflation

    Fels’ Review Confirms Corporate Practices As Key Drivers of Inflation

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    The Australia Institute welcomes the report of the Inquiry Into Price Gouging and Unfair Pricing Practices, chaired by Prof Allan Fels, and delivered today to the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

    Key points:

    • The Australia Institute and its Centre for Future Work, which were among the first to identify the role of record-high corporate profits in driving the acceleration of inflation after the COVID lockdowns, made a major submission to the Fels inquiry and appeared before its public hearing in Melbourne in September 2023
    • A 2023 Centre for Future Work report showed that over two-thirds of excess economy-wide inflation (above the RBA’s 2.5% target) from end-2019 through the September quarter of 2022 was attributable to higher unit corporate profits.
    • Australia Institute reports documented that the rise in profits was strongest in industries with concentrated or strategic power in the broader economy: including mining and energy, manufacturing, construction and wholesale trade.

    “Prof Fels’ careful review confirms that price-setting strategies by corporations, including many obviously unfair and exploitative practices, have contributed significantly to the cost-of-living crisis afflicting Australian households,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist for the Australia Institute.

    “Since the current inflationary cycle began after COVID lockdowns, there has been too much attention on wages, labour costs, and consumer spending as the supposed drivers of higher prices. The RBA and other policy-makers have been too slow to acknowledge the role of profit and greed in pushing up prices.

    “This inquiry marshals abundant evidence from official statistical agencies, international economic organisations, think tanks and academic research to show that corporations have taken advantage of the pandemic and its aftermath to exploit consumers and drive up inflation.

    “Prof Fels’ report contributes to a more accurate understanding of what is causing the cost-of-living crisis, and a more balanced and fair strategy for solving it.”

    “Australian corporate profits have moderated in the last year, as supply chains were repaired and energy prices retreated. This has been crucial to the partial slowdown in inflation experienced in the same time.

    “But further reductions in prices for many essential goods and services are required to fully repair living standards, and Prof Fels’ recommendations for more exposure of excess prices and stronger competition measures to reduce them would help a lot.”


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

    New Report Reveals Changing Face and Future of Self-Employment

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    A new report by the Australia Institute shows self-employment in Australia has changed in recent years, towards fewer business owners and more gig work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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  • Special Issue of Journal Marks Halfway Point of First Albanese Government

    Special Issue of Journal Marks Halfway Point of First Albanese Government

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    The Journal of Australian Political Economy, a peer-reviewed journal based at the University of Sydney, has today published a special issue evaluating the record of the Albanese government during the first half of its term in office.

    The Journal of Australian Political Economy, a peer-reviewed journal based at the University of Sydney, has today published a special issue evaluating the record of the Albanese government during the first half of its term in office.

    The special issue features 19 articles reviewing various aspects of the government’s legislative and policy agenda since its election in May 2022. Topics covered include economic and monetary policy, labour issues, energy and climate, foreign policy (including the AUKUS treaty), and the Voice referendum.

    The special issue was edited by Professor Emeritus Frank Stilwell of the University of Sydney’s Department of Political Economy.

    All articles included are available open-access here.

    “The midpoint of the current federal Labor government’s term of office is a good time to take stock and assess its performance,” said Professor Stilwell.

    “The mixture of the government’s accomplishments, and its continuing policy and political challenges, show the tensions as well as the possibilities when the Labor party is at the helm of the ship of state.”

    “One topic that continues to bedevil the government is its plan to move ahead with Stage 3 tax cuts, despite criticisms that they will widen income inequality in Australia and add to inflationary pressures,” said David Richardson, Senior Researcher at the Australia Institute and co-author of the special issue’s review of tax policies.

    “The Stage 3 cuts are massively regressive, and the government should instead focus its tax reform efforts on developing a fairer system for taxing capital gains.

    “Since the ratio of wealth to income is predicted to double in the next 40 years, Australia urgently needs to ensure the owners of wealth make a fair contribution to the costs of a decent society,” Richardson concluded.

    “The government deserves positive grades for measures taken to strengthen collective bargaining and boost wage growth,” said Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work and a co-author of the special issue’s article on labour policy.

    “While more labour reforms are needed, the government has made significant strides toward a better balance between workers and employers, and revitalising long-stagnant wage growth,” Stanford added.

    Five of the articles in the special issue reflect contributions from staff and associates of the Australia Institute, including:

    • Labour Policy: co-authored by five staff members of the Institute’s Centre for Future Work.
    • Tax Policy: co-authored by Prof Stilwell and David Richardson, Senior Researcher at the Australia Institute.
    • Care Policy: authored by Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director for the Centre for Future Work.
    • Energy Policy: co-authored by Dr Matthew Ryan, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Australia Institute, and Prof Stuart Rosewarne of the University of Sydney.
    • Monetary Policy: authored by Dr Mike Beggs of the University of Sydney, and Associate of the Centre for Future Work.

  • The Stage 3 tax cuts will make our bad tax system worse

    The Stage 3 tax cuts will make our bad tax system worse

    by Jim Stanford in The Conversation

    Jim Stanford

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    Originally published in The Conversation on December 11, 2023

    Australia has one of the weakest tax systems for redistribution among industrial nations, and as Dr Jim Stanford writes, the Stage 3 tax cuts will make it worse.

    One of the chief purposes of government payments and taxes is to redistribute income, which is why tax rates are higher on taxpayers with higher incomes and payments tend to get directed to people on lower incomes.

    Australia’s tax rates range from a low of zero cents in the dollar to a high of 45 cents, and payments including JobSeeker, the age pension, and child benefits which are limited to recipients whose income is below certain thresholds.

    In this way, every nation’s tax and transfer system cuts inequality, some more than others.

    Which is why I was surprised when I used the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data to calculate how much.

    The OECD measures inequality using what’s known as a gini coefficient. This is a number on a scale between zero and 1 where zero represents complete equality (everyone receives the same income) and 1 represents complete inequality (one person has all the income).

    The higher the number, the higher the higher the inequality.

    Australia is far from the most equal of OECD nations – it is 21st out of the 37 countries for which the OECD collects data, but what really interested me is what Australia’s tax and transfer system does to equalise things.

    And the answer is: surprisingly little compared to other OECD countries.

    Australia’s system does little to temper inequality

    The graph below displays the number of points by which each country’s tax and transfer system reduces its gini coefficient. The ranking indicates the extent to which the system equalises incomes.

    The OECD country whose system most strongly redistributes incomes is Finland, whose tax and transfer rules cut its gini coefficient by 0.25 points.

    The country with the weakest redistribution of incomes is Mexico which only cuts inequality by 0.02 points.

    Australia is the 8th weakest, cutting inequality by only 0.12 points.

    Apart from Mexico, among OECD members only Chile, Costa Rica, Korea, Switzerland, Türkiye and Iceland do a worse job of redistributing incomes.

    What is really odd is that, before redistribution, Australia’s income distribution is pretty good compared to other OECD countries – the tenth best.

    It’s not that Australia’s systems don’t reduce inequality, it’s that other country’s systems do it more.

    Of the OECD members who do less than Australia, four are emerging economies: Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Türkiye. Like most developing countries, they have low taxes, weak social protections and poor tax-gathering systems.

    Indeed, in Chile and Mexico, taxes and transfers do almost nothing to moderate extreme inequality.

    The other three countries ranked below Australia – Iceland, Switzerland, and South Korea – boast unusually equal distributions of market incomes. Each is among the four most equal OECD countries by market income, and each is considerably more equal than Australia.

    Australia ‘less developed’ when it comes to redistribution

    This makes Australia’s weak redistribution system more typical of a low-income emerging economy than an advanced industrial democracy.

    Even Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand do a better job of redistributing income than Australia.

    This new data enhances concerns about the impact of planned Stage 3 tax cuts. By returning proportionately more to high earners than low earners these will further erode the redistributive impact of Australia’s tax system.

    It also highlights the consequences of Australia’s relatively weak payments programs, including JobSeeker which on one measure is the second-weakest in the OECD. It’s an understatement to say we’ve room for improvement.


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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

  • Higher exports prices improve the budget, but the Stage 3 tax cuts remain the wrong tax at the wrong time

    Higher exports prices improve the budget, but the Stage 3 tax cuts remain the wrong tax at the wrong time

    by Greg Jericho in The Guardian

    Greg Jericho

    Chief Economist

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    Originally published in The Guardian on December 14, 2023

    As the Budget outlook improves, with most of the benefits of Stage 3 tax cuts going to those earing over $120,000, over 80% of workers will be short-changed

    Yesterday’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) provided some pleasing news for the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. But higher revenue does not mean a stronger economy nor that households are better off.

    While the Treasurer was releasing the latest budget numbers the annual figures for median earnings were released by the Bureau of Statistics.

    These figures showed that the median weekly earnings in August this year were $1,300 – a rise of 4.2% from last year, which was less than the 5.4% increase in inflation.

    That weekly amount translates to $67,600 in annual earnings.

    People earning that amount will get just $565 from the Stage 3 tax cuts (0.8%) while someone on $200,000 – well in the top 10% of earners will get a 4.5% cut worth $9,075.

    The Treasurer told ABC 730 on Wednesday night that the government has not changed its position on Stage 3 and that “We think there is an important role for returning bracket creep where governments can afford to do that.”

    The problem is the Stage 3 cuts are mostly focused at rewarding those on high incomes, who are least affected by bracket creep.

    If the Government was truly worried about using the bonus revenue from higher export prices to assist low and middle-income earners it would care more about those on the median income of $66,700 than those in the top tax bracket and top 10% of income.


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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

  • Paying for Collective Bargaining

    Paying for Collective Bargaining

    by Jim Stanford

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    Recent labour law reforms in Australia have focused attention on the crucial role played by collective bargaining in achieving higher wages, safer working conditions, and better job security.

    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.


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  • Solidarity Research for Union Renewal

    Solidarity Research for Union Renewal

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    A Symposium of Researchers and Trade Unionists co-hosted by the Centre for Future Work and Unions WA.

    • 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!


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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

  • Employers Steal More than 280 Hours from Workers Each Year: Go Home on Time Day Report 2023

    Employers Steal More than 280 Hours from Workers Each Year: Go Home on Time Day Report 2023

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    Despite record-low unemployment, Australian employers are still managing to steal more than 280 hours from their employees each year.

    That’s the finding of the Australia Institute’s 2023 report, Short Changed, tracking annual work hours and unpaid overtime for Go Home On Time Day on November 22. It has also found the average worker is losing out on $11,055 a year, or $425 a fortnight, to unpaid overtime.

    Key findings:

    The Australia Institute surveyed 1,640 people between August 29 and September 6. Of those, 61% were in paid work. 

    • Employees reported doing an average of 5.4 hours of unpaid work a week overall
      • Full-time employees perform an average of 6.2 hours, and casuals or part-timers four hours
      • Workers aged 18 to 29 do the most unpaid overtime (7.4 hours) a week
    • This ‘time theft’ equates to 281 hours a year or seven standard 38-hour weeks spent working for free
    • Australian employees are losing a cumulative $131 billion to unpaid work a year
    • Nearly half (46%) are not satisfied with the amount of paid work they’re doing and either want more or fewer hours:
      • A third of all workers want more paid hours (35%), but this rises to 54% for under-30s
      • Half of casuals (49%) of two in five part-timers (40%) would like more paid hours
      • Another 11% of all workers would like fewer paid hours

    “This survey shows just how uneven the labour market is. We’ve got many workers, especially casuals in insecure jobs, wanting more hours. At the same time, employers are more likely to demand long hours, including large amounts of unpaid overtime, from full-time workers,” Dr Fiona Macdonald, Policy Director, Industrial and Social at the Centre for Future Work said.

    “Record-low unemployment should have pushed both satisfaction with working hours and paid hours higher as employers scrambled to fill labour shortages. Instead, ‘time theft’ has actually blown out by 57 hours per worker since 2022 and has returned to near pandemic-era levels.

    “This dispels simplistic arguments that workers have the upper hand on employers because of recent industrial relations reforms. In fact, we’ve seen workers agree to more hours due to the cost of living crunch. Perversely, this has resulted in employees giving their bosses a free kick because many of those hours end up being unpaid.

    “Providing more protections for workers in these insecure positions, as proposed in the Closing Loopholes legislation currently before parliament, is an important priority for improving Australian labour market outcomes.”

    Visit Go Home On Time Day 2023 to read more and use our online calculator to work out your unpaid overtime.


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