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Category: Opinion

  • 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

  • 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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  • Pandemic Shows Australia Needs Domestic Manufacturing

    Pandemic Shows Australia Needs Domestic Manufacturing

    by Jim Stanford

    Jim Stanford

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    Disruptions in global supplies of essential medical equipment have served as a wake-up call to Australians that it is always vital for a country to retain the capacity to domestically produce manufactured products that may be crucial to national security and well-being.

    In this commentary, Centre for Future Work Economist Dan Nahum reviews the qualitative reasons why manufacturing retains a special strategic importance to the overall economy, and discusses the potential synergies between the development of sustainable energy resources and a revitalisation of manufacturing.

    Rebooting the Australian Manufacturing Sector in the Era of Coronavirus and Climate Change

    Since the COVID-19 crisis emerged, Australians have been starkly reminded of the importance of being able to manufacture goods domestically. International shortages of, and restrictions on, the export of medical equipment and personal protective equipment have given us all a fright. While thankfully critical shortages have not yet emerged, the crisis has confirmed that being able to domestically produce a full range of essential manufactures is a matter of national wellbeing.

    For many years the conventional economic wisdom was that as a high-wage, resource-rich economy, Australia was unable to competitively manufacture — nor did it need to. Between digging up raw materials and shipping them to Asian trading partners (subsequently paying a premium for reimported manufactures made from those resources) and our pivot to a ‘service economy’, we could somehow sidestep the need to produce what we materially use. Even Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has now conceded that unbalanced strategy is not viable.

    It’s true the extraction of our extraordinary mineral endowment made some Australians wealthy, but in a lopsided way: unbalanced reliance on resource extraction, combined with the long decline of manufacturing, has made Australia far more unequal — indeed, we are now more unequal than most OECD nations. Additionally, this myopic economic focus has put us at the mercy of boom-and-bust cycles in global demand for our resources.

    There are many core reasons why Australia needs a healthy, proportionate manufacturing sector:

    • Australians are buying more manufactured goods over time; and manufacturing output is growing around the world. The absolute decline of manufacturing in Australia is an exception to the experience of other industrialised countries.
    • Manufacturing is the most innovation-intensive sector in the whole economy. No country can be an innovation leader without manufacturing.
    • Manufactured goods account for over two-thirds of world merchandise trade. A country that cannot successfully export manufactures will be shut out of most trade.
    • Production costs in Australia are not expensive relative to other industrial countries (now that the Australian dollar is once again trading in normal range).
    • Even small remote countries (like Korea, Ireland, New Zealand and Israel) are increasing their manufacturing output, and preserving and creating manufacturing jobs. Their experience demonstrates that we cannot blame geographic isolation for our deindustrialisation.
    • Manufacturing anchors hundreds of thousands of other jobs throughout the economy, thanks to its long and complex supply chain. A myriad of supplies and inputs are purchased by manufacturing facilities.

    There’s another key reason to be optimistic about Australian manufacturing — if we create an appropriate policy environment for it. Australia is poised to take advantage of our bountiful renewable energy endowment to reinvigorate manufacturing, on the foundation of plentiful, competitive, and reliable power.

    Read The Centre for Future Work’s report Powering Onwards: Australia’s Opportunity to Reinvigorate Manufacturing through Renewable Energy, which considers the potential and actual connections between renewables and manufacturing in detail.

    The following core policy levers would help to ensure that Australia’s manufacturing sector thrives in decades to come, enhancing our prosperity and our national security:

    Targeted Tax Incentives: No-strings-attached tax cuts for corporations do not stimulate investment, innovation, or employment. Rather, fiscal incentives are more effective when they are linked directly to investment. Examples include accelerated depreciation provisions (allowing companies to write off the cost of new investments faster), investment tax credits, and public co-investments in specific strategic projects.

    Investing Public Funds in Key Industries: International experience confirms that public financial assets can effectively lever greater capital investment in key industries. These include state-owned development banks (as in Japan and Korea) or other forms of sovereign wealth (as in Singapore, the UAE, and Norway). Public investment vehicles have been used successfully — indeed profitably — in numerous applications in Australia (for example, the CEFC to finance sustainable energy projects). The same principles can apply in manufacturing investment. Additionally, industry super funds could play a larger role in financing the development of strategic products and sectors.

    Innovation: Empirical evidence shows successful innovation must be embodied in the hands-on process of ‘learning by doing’. And there is no other sector more directly connected to the innovation process than manufacturing. Government needs to provide tangible, direct support to innovation in manufacturing. We need better systems for linking public innovation activity with commercial applications. And we can emulate successful public equity investments in innovation-intensive businesses in other countries (like the effective methods for financing innovative firms used in Israel, Finland, and Ireland).

    Sector Strategies: Government needs to identify manufacturing sub-sectors with the right criteria for success, and then co-ordinate investment and growth. These sector strategies must engage all relevant sector stakeholders (business, unions, educational institutions, research organisations, state and local governments). Even businesses which compete with each other can benefit when the whole sector succeeds. Criteria for identifying high-potential sectors include innovation, export orientation, productivity, and strong supply chain linkages.

    Networks, Eco-Systems, and Clusters: Successful modern industrial policy relies centrally on connections and collaboration among players from different firms, agencies, and stakeholders. Research shows that spillovers among these diverse sector participants, and the sharing of knowledge between them, are crucial to the development of ‘critical mass’ in any high-tech industry. Often, these networks and clusters are geographically concentrated. Government cannot simply ‘create’ clusters, but it can facilitate their emergence.

    Industrial Infrastructure: Government investments in public capital assets of all kinds will play a crucial role in fostering manufacturing growth. Infrastructure investments help to offset the sustained weakness of private investment, and improve weak macroeconomic conditions. One key focus of infrastructure investment should include facilities and services which support manufacturing: ranging from transportation infrastructure, to utility connections (especially renewable energy), to modern training facilities (to help better integrate TAFE and university training with industry). We should maximise the use of Australian-made manufacturing content in those (and all other) infrastructure projects.

    Connecting Renewable Energy Investment to Manufacturing: Given Australia’s superabundance of renewable resources, Australia should position itself as the world’s renewable energy superpower. Renewable energy is appropriate for most industrial applications, including heavy industry, and now offers lower costs than fossil fuel sources (including gas). To expedite the transition to renewable energy, the manufacturing sector requires stability in energy policy, industrial strategies to take advantage of Australia’s renewable energy endowment, and government partnerships with firms that can benefit from and add value to Australia’s renewable energy endowment.

    Skills and Capacities: Enhancing the future skills and capacities of workers must be a vital component of future sector strategies. Consistent funding for skills training at all levels is essential, as are efforts to more closely link training programs with future workforce needs in strategic sectors. Germany’s apprenticeship system is perhaps the most outstanding international role model in this area.

    Leveraging Procurement: Australian governments are massive purchasers of manufactured goods. An obvious way to support domestic manufacturing is to ensure those expenditures generate the maximum possible boost to domestic industry. This also helps to reduce the final net cost of the program: since the government collects additional revenues through the new work spurred by domestic procurement decisions, offsetting the public expenditure. Other countries regularly utilise domestic content targets in procurement to support domestic producers. Australia can do the same.

    Trade that Goes Both Ways: International trade is essential to the viability of most manufacturing due to the importance of economies of scale in production. Australian trade negotiators need to do far more than mutual tariff reduction to stimulate Australian manufactured exports. And Australian agencies (like Austrade) can be much more proactive in promoting Australia’s exports, through initiatives like expanded credit financing, initiatives to leverage Australian participation in global supply chains, and government support for international marketing.

    A thriving manufacturing sector confers important benefits across the whole economy. Even more importantly, a large and adaptable manufacturing sector offers resilience against periodic crises such as COVID-19. If Australia does not add value through the expansion of our manufacturing sectors, we can anticipate that our relative standard of living will decline, and our vulnerability to future supply disruptions and health crises will only increase. We can and must build a manufacturing sector that is economically and ecologically sustainable, and that adds complexity and resilience to Australia’s economy.

    See the Centre for Future Work’s previous research on the Australian manufacturing sector:

    Manufacturing Still Matters (2016) shows that manufacturing, far from being inherently doomed in Australia, is quite viable. Similar countries manufacture successfully. It provides an agenda of policy recommendations for support of the sector.

    Manufacturing: A Moment of Opportunity (2017) demonstrates that while the Australian public underestimate the size and therefore strategic economic importance of the sector, it enjoys strong popular support. Furthermore, the report identifies some promising signs of future growth in the sector.

    From Consensus to Action: Report from the First National Manufacturing Summit (2018) summarises the key findings of the first National Manufacturing Summit, including areas of strong policy consensus reached among the business, industry peak bodies, trade unions, government departments, academic institutions and vocational training providers and other summit delegates. The report also identifies several priorities for further policy research.

    Advanced Skills for Advanced Manufacturing (2018) argues that Australia’s present vocational education and training system, damaged by years of underfunding and failed policy experimentation, is a weak link in meeting the needs of the industry. High-skilled, high-paid jobs rely on a strong VET sector, and this report identifies twelve key reforms to achieve that.

    Auto Shutdown Another Economic Blow (2016) analyses the causes and impacts of the closure of the Australian car manufacturing industry. It notes that secondary job losses will be several times larger than the direct jobs eliminated at the car plants.

    Penny Wise and Pound Foolish (2016) analyses the impact of the NSW government’s decision to source railroad rolling stock manufacturing work to Korea rather than taking advantage of the opportunity to procure domestically. Governments need to account for the full range of potential costs and benefits of their procurement decisions (job creation, industry development, government revenues, and so on), not simply minimise the up-front purchase cost.


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    Post-COVID Manufacturing Renewal Represents Potential $50 Billion Boost to Economy

    New research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work reveals that Australia ranks last among all OECD countries for manufacturing self-sufficiency. While this indicator confirms the dramatic decline of domestic manufacturing in recent years, it also reveals the enormous potential benefits that would be generated by rebuilding manufacturing back to a size proportional to our national needs: including $180 billion in new sales, $50 billion in additional GDP, and over 400,000 new jobs.

    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

  • Webinar: Protecting Jobs and Incomes During the Pandemic

    Webinar: Protecting Jobs and Incomes During the Pandemic

    by Jim Stanford

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    The COVID-19 pandemic is producing an unprecedented shutdown of large parts of the national and global economies. Our Director Dr. Jim Stanford provided an overview of the coming recession, how it differs from previous downturns, and the best ways for government to respond to protect Australians as much as possible from the economic fall-out.

    Jim titled his presentation “Off the Cliff”, highlighting that the immediate shutdown of so much of Australia’s work and production is producing an economic contraction unlike anything experienced in history.

    Comparing Recessions

    Watch a video recording of the webinar:

    And/or download Jim’s slides below.

    This webinar was part of the Australia Institute’s weekly pandemic webinar series.


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    Presentation slides

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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

  • Open Letter From Economists and Policy Experts: Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During Pandemic

    Open Letter From Economists and Policy Experts: Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During Pandemic

    by Jim Stanford

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    109 Australian economists and policy experts have signed an open letter, initiated by the Centre for Future Work, supporting a government wage subsidy to prevent mass unemployment during the coming economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The letter and the full list of signatories is reprinted below. It has been forwarded to Prime Minister Morrison.

    Public Statement from Economists and Public Policy Experts:

    A Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During the Coronavirus Shutdown

    The unprecedented public health measures required to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic are causing a dramatic shutdown of work and production in several key sectors of Australia’s economy. Immediate full or partial closures of activity are occurring in several consumer-facing industries (such as hospitality, retail, airlines, recreation and personal services). But before long, spillover losses will be experienced in other sectors, too: including wholesale trade and logistics, manufacturing, business services, education, and others. Consumer and business confidence has been deeply shocked, and that will magnify the negative economic effects of the pandemic.

    The coming recession will be unprecedented in Australian history – in both its speed and its depth. Without immediate action, we expect that 1-2 million workers, or even more, could lose their jobs in coming weeks. That would drive unemployment to 15% or higher, overwhelm income support programs, and leave hundreds of thousands of businesses unable to function – even after the immediate health danger passes.

    This is a dangerous and dramatic moment in Australia’s economic history. It is imperative that the federal and state governments act immediately and powerfully to protect Australian workers and businesses from the worst of the coming downturn. Important steps have been taken to expand access and benefit levels for income support payments to Australian workers (including casuals, contractors, and gig workers) losing work because of the pandemic. This is a helpful, but on its own inadequate, response. Government must also act forcefully to prevent mass job losses in coming weeks – not just provide support to those who do lose work.

    In this regard, we recommend that the Commonwealth government immediately implement a large-scale wage subsidy scheme, similar to those already enacted in several other industrial countries (including, variously, the UK, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Ireland). Under these programs, government directly pays to employers (for a limited period of time) a majority portion of wages (between 70 and 90%) to cover the wages of workers who would otherwise be stood down from their positions. The measure can apply to non-standard workers (including contractors and self-employed). It can also be integrated with measures to support short time working as an alternative to complete redundancy. The wage subsidy is paid to firms experiencing severe losses of revenue and business (beyond a specified threshold). It would cover most of the wage bills for workers who can no longer work for economic reasons, up to a specified ceiling (perhaps the level of full-time median earnings). This program will be expensive – but governments everywhere have recognised that this unprecedented crisis requires them to do everything in their power to protect people, jobs, communities and the economy.

    To date, Australia’s response to the pandemic has been uncertain, inconsistent and inadequate. Immediate, powerful action to keep millions of Australians in their jobs, instead of pushing them into an overloaded and complex Centrelink system, would significantly ease the pandemic’s painful economic effects. It would underpin financial stability for millions of households through the coming terrible weeks or months. And it would preserve the viability of hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses, allowing them to resume work and production as soon as the health restrictions are eased.

    We the undersigned support the proposal for a strong wage subsidy program to keep workers in employment through the coming downturn, and we urge the Commonwealth government to implement such a policy quickly.

    Download full list of signatories below.


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    List of signatories

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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

  • Responding to the Economic Emergency

    Responding to the Economic Emergency

    by Jim Stanford in New Matilda

    Jim Stanford

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    Originally published in New Matilda on March 21, 2020

    The scale and scope of the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 will be unprecedented in our lifetimes. Mainstream economists have belatedly realised the pandemic will cause an economic downturn, but they are not yet appreciating the size of that downturn, nor the unconventional responses that will be required. Simply calling for government “stimulus” is sadly inadequate, given the complete shut-down of work and production that is occurring in many sectors of the economy. The task is no longer supporting markets with incremental “pump-priming.” What’s needed is a war-like effort, led by government, to mobilise every possible resource to protect Australians’ health and livelihoods. Money is not an object – and this epic effort should not be held back by normal acquiescence to private-sector priorities and decisions.

    That’s the core message of new analysis by Centre for Future Work Director Dr. Jim Stanford, published today by the Australian journal New Matilda.

    Stanford’s article outlines the immediate economic measures needed to both confront the health emergency and prevent households and firms from collapsing:

    • Immediate mobilization of resources to protect health: including more staff at health facilities, quick deployment of off-site and mobile testing capacities, home support for people quarantined or recovering, and quick expansion of equipment and facilities where possible.
    • Income protection for workers: including for casuals, self-employed, gig-workers, and many part-timers who don’t have effective access to sick pay. Incomes must be protected for all workers (regardless of employment status), through mandated special payments (as proposed by the ACTU).
    • Other direct income supplements: similar to the one-time payments distributed in 2009, as well as more targeted aid (like higher Newstart).
    • Debt relief and business assistance: emergency financing will be needed to keep firms viable in many industries (including airlines, other transportation, tourism, and hospitality). Other parts of society also need protection from creditors; foreclosures and evictions should be prohibited, and other personal and credit card debts deferred.

    But Stanford also discusses the longer-run challenge that will face the Australian economy: the pandemic is imposing a shock that is far too powerful and all-encompassing for private market players to autonomously recover from. The economy will need unprecedented and lasting investments by government to repair and expand public infrastructure and services, and directly put Australians back to work:

    “There is enormous need for urgent rebuilding required in our economy and our communities. Repairing and strengthening health care infrastructure comes first, but other priorities, too, are urgent: like sustainable transit, green energy, non-market housing, aged care and early child education. The case for mobilising resources under the leadership of governments and public institutions, and employing millions of Australians to do that work, is compelling. We can repair the damage of this crisis (and better prepare for the next one), deliver valuable services, and create millions of jobs. All we need is the willingness to imagine a different model of organizing and leading economic activity.”

    Please read the full article, We Need Wage Guarantees And Radical Restructure, Not More ‘Stimulus’, published by New Matilda.


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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

  • Financialisation and the Productivity Slowdown

    Financialisation and the Productivity Slowdown

    by Anis Chowdhury

    Anis Chowdhury

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    There has been much discussion in recent months about the apparent slowdown in Australian productivity growth. Rather than dredging up the usual wish-list of the business community (more deregulation, more privatisation, and more deunionisation), it’s time to look at the deeper, structural factors behind stagnant productivity. In this commentary, Dr. Anis Chowdhury, Associate of the Centre for Future Work, looks to the perverse role of our overdeveloped financial sector in slowing down productivity-enhancing investment and innovation.

    Financialisation and the Productivity Conundrum

    by Anis Chowdhury

    There has been much angst at the slower or stagnant productivity growth experienced recently in Australia. Ross Gittins, the Sydney Morning Herald’s much respected Economics Editor, summarised some of the discussions reflecting on the causes and remedies of the productivity problem in his recent piece, ‘Productivity problem? Start at the bottom, not the top’ (SMH, 2 March 2020).

    The phenomenon of slow productivity growth is neither unique to Australia nor recent. It has been observed globally over the past few decades, especially in the developed world, as highlighted in recent reports on global economic health (e.g. United Nations, World Economic Situation and Prospects 2020, and the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects 2020). The trend accelerated since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008-2009, as emphasised by Maurice Obstfeld, IMF’s former Chief Economist, at the joint BIS-IMF-OECD conference on weak productivity (10 January 2018).

    The UN report notes that “as firms around the globe have become more reluctant to invest, productivity growth has continued to decelerate.” It attributes much of the slowdown to significantly lower contributions from capital deepening (investment in machinery, technology, etc.). Subdued productivity growth is also proposed as one of the reasons for slow growth of real wages and falling share of labour income in GDP, contributing to rising inequality – although even more rapid productivity growth is no guarantee, of course, of rising wages or greater equality.

    The World Bank report observes that to rekindle productivity growth, a comprehensive approach is necessary for “facilitating investment in physical, intangible, and human capital; encouraging reallocation of resources towards more productive sectors; fostering firm capabilities to reinvigorate technology adoption and innovation; and promoting a growth-friendly macroeconomic and institutional environment.”

    While similar observations can also be found in the OECD and IMF reports, none offer explanations as to why this is happening, that reach beyond orthodox excuses – like  uncertainty due to Brexit and US-China trade tensions. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), OECD and IMF also included such factors as unconventional monetary policy (very low or negative real interest rates) and financial frictions (e.g. firm-level financial fragilities and tightening credit conditions) as possible causes of weak investment and the productivity slowdown since the GFC.

    Financialisation

    However, one can trace the deeper cause of the long-term declining trend in productivity growth since the 1970s to financialisation: that is, the dominance of finance over the real economy. This is visible globally in the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies.

    Beginning with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in August 1971, when President Nixon unilaterally withdrew US commitment to gold convertibility of currencies, the process of financialisation gathered pace in the 1980s. This coincided with the neoliberal counter revolution against Keynesian economics, and the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. All this ushered in an era of multinational corporation-led globalisation. In turn, this led to rapid growth of international trade, foreign direct investment and capital flows – all mutually reinforcing – and the consolidation of finance’s domination over the real economy.

    Several features of this era of financialisation have direct implications for productivity. They include:

    • Rapid expansion of financial markets, and the proliferation of financial institutions, instruments and services with the de-regulation and liberalisation of the financial system, blurring the distinction between speculative and patient investors;
    • The banking sector becoming more concentrated, less regionalised and more internationalised with the decline of mutual, co-operative and State ownership of banks and financial institutions;
    • Financial intermediation shifting from banks and other institutions to financial markets, thus the axiomatic ‘invisible hand’ of supposedly anonymous, self-regulating financial markets replacing the ‘visible hand’ of relationship banking;
    • Nonfinancial corporations increasingly deriving profitability from their financial as opposed to their productive activities;
    • Financial institutions increasingly becoming owners of equity, and real decision-making power shifting from corporate boardrooms to global financial markets pursuing shareholder value;
    • Managerial remuneration packages increasingly becoming linked to short-term profitability and share price performance rather than to longer-term growth prospects.

    These features, by and large, have adversely affected levels of real capital investment and innovation, due to the inexorable pressure of financial interests for the pursuit of short-term profits and dividends. Shareholders (most of whom are financial institutions) demand from corporations a bigger, faster distribution of profits. The lower retention of profits ratio, and share buybacks to boost share price together imply reduced internal finance for real investment, R&D, and technology upgrading.

    Corporate managers act in the interests of the financial sector as they too profit personally from increasing stock market valuations – often linked to reduction of employment. This has meant chronic job insecurity and underinvestment in on-the-job training. Increased insecurity also discourages workers to invest in their own skill upgrading.

    Thus, the overall effect of financialisation on investment, technology adoption, skill upgrading has been negative, with adverse consequences for productivity and decent jobs.

    Misallocation

    An overgrown financial system also costs the economy on a daily basis by attracting too many talented workers to ultimately unproductive careers in the financial sector. Talented students are disproportionately attracted to finance courses in preference to liberal arts or social sciences; moreover, bright engineering and science graduates are increasingly engaged in the financial sector, where they can earn many times more. Research at BIS shows that when skilled labour works in finance, the financial sector grows more quickly at the expense of the real economy – disproportionately harming R&D intensive industries.

    In his Fred Hirsch Memorial Lecture (15 May 1984), Nobel Laureate James Tobin doubted the value of “throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to the social productivity.”

    Rent seeking

    Luigi Zingales titled his 2015 presidential address to the American Finance Association, ‘Does finance benefit society?’. While acknowledging the need for a sophisticated financial sector, he doubted whether the growth of the financial sector in the last forty years has

    been beneficial to society. He argued on the basis of both theory and empirical evidence that a large component of that growth has been pure rent seeking.

    According to Gerry Epstein and Juan Antonio Montecino, the  US financial sector captured rents “through a variety of mechanisms including anticompetitive practices, the marketing of excessively complex and risky products, government subsidies such as financial bailouts, and even fraudulent activities… By overcharging for products and services, financial firms grab a bigger slice of the economic pie at the expense of their customers and taxpayers.”

    Robert Jenkins listed more ‘misdeeds’ of UK banks. These range from mis-selling (e.g. of payment protection insurance, interest rate swaps), manipulation of markets (e.g. precious metals markets, US Treasury Market auction/client sales, energy markets), aiding and abetting tax evasion and money laundering for violent drug cartels, collusion with Greek authorities to mislead EU policy makers on meeting Euro criteria, and more.

    All this sounds too familiar to us in Australia after the Hayne Royal Commission into misconduct in the financial services industry.

    A drag on the real sector

    The power of finance has become a drag on the development of the real sector in a number of ways.

    First, the manner in which the financial sector has grown has not been conducive for

    real investment and savings. Finance has failed to act as an intermediary between savers and investors, and to allocate and monitor funds for real investment.

    Second, the growth of financial markets and speculation have diverted resources into

    what are essentially zero-sum games.

    Third, the rush to financial liberalisation and the failures of the regulatory systems produced more frequent financial crises, with increasing depth and width. An over-abundance of (cash) finance is used primarily to fund a proliferation of short-term, high-risk investments in newly developed financial instruments, such as derivatives — Warren Buffett’s ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’ that blew up the global financial system in 2007–08.

    Thus, real capital formation which increases overall economic output has slowed down, as profit owners, looking for the highest returns in the shortest possible time, reallocate their investments to more profitable financial markets.

    With financial speculators now panicking in the face of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, in the context of inflated and debt-heavy financial valuations, we could be poised for another chapter in this repeating saga.

    Way out

    No amount of corporate tax cuts or suppression of labour rights in the name of structural reform will solve the productivity conundrum. What is really required is the taming of finance.

    Finance can positively contribute to economic progress, but only when the ‘ephor’ is ‘governed’ and ‘directed’ by State regulation to structure accumulation and distribution into socially useful directions.

    The earlier era of financialisation during the late 19th century and early 20th century ended with the Great Depression. John Maynard Keynes wrote in ‘The Grand Slump of 1930’, “there cannot be a real recovery . . . until the ideas of lenders and the ideas of productive borrowers are brought together again . . . .”. He thought, “seldom in modern history has the gap between the two been so wide and so difficult to bridge.”

    Fortunately, the policymakers listened to Keynes and regulated finance to serve the real economy. This produced nearly three decades of the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, ending in the 1970s.

    But the gap between finance and the real economy is now even wider and more difficult to bridge. It will require a lot of political will and courage to confront the very powerful finance capital which has changed the rules of the game to facilitate rent-seeking practices of a self-serving global elite.

    Dr. Anis Chowdhury is an Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University (School of Social Sciences) and the University of New South Wales (School of Business, ADFA), and an Associate of the Centre for Future Work.


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  • Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

    Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

    by Jim Stanford in Canadian Dimension

    Jim Stanford

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    Originally published in Canadian Dimension on February 11, 2020

    In a new guest commentary for the journal Canadian Dimension, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford argues that existing power relationships in the labour market are being reinforced, more than disrupted, by the process of technological change.

    Stanford highlights seven ways in which the nature of work and employment is demonstrating a fundamental continuity, despite changes in technology and work organisation: ranging from the predominance of wage labour in the economy, to employers’ continuing interest in extracting maximum labour effort for the least possible labour cost.

    “I have started to conclude there is more constancy than change in the world of work. In particular, the central power relationships that shape employment in a capitalist economy are not fundamentally changing: to the contrary, they are being reinforced… As a result, I suspect the future of work will look a lot like its past, at least as it has existed over the past two centuries. Where work is concerned, it is truly a case of ‘back to the future.’”

    Stanford rejects the common assumption that changes in employment relationships (such as the rise of “gig” jobs, and other forms of precarious work) are driven primarily by technology–stressing instead the importance of discrete choices within enterprises and society as a whole about what kinds of technology are developed, and how they are implemented. Improvements in work are certainly possible, but only when workers are able to exert active, organised pressure on employers and governments.

    Please read Stanford’s full commentary, Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss (‘Who’ soundtrack optional!).


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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