The Fair Work Commission’s Review of Modern Awards 2023-24 is considering the impact of workplace relations settings on work and care. This submission argues for good quality, secure part-time jobs to achieve more gender-equitable sharing of care and to support women’s full economic participation.
This paper presents the case for an aged care worker registration and accreditation scheme
In accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (Aged Care Royal Commission) the proposed scheme includes a requirement for attainment of a Certificate III qualification and engagement in ongoing training or continuing professional development (CPD).
Late yesterday the final part 2 of the government’s Closing Loopholes industrial relations bill was passed by the Senate.
This means Australia’s employment laws will be further amended to tackle the problems of insecurity and low pay, with the changes targeting casual employment and gig platform work arrangements. The package also includes a new right for employees to disconnect from work outside their paid work time.
A new definition of casual employment will be included in the Fair Work Act, making it harder for employers to classify their employees as casual when, in reality, the employees are required to work regular hours for a continuing and indefinite period. The legislation also establishes a new pathway for casual employees to seek permanent status.
The casual employment changes should go some way to stopping and reversing the growth of so-called ‘permanent casual’ arrangements, which have become widespread. Workers in these arrangements are actually in permanent jobs while they are given casual employment status.
Casual employment means lower pay, little or no job security and no right to paid leave. Lack of employment security in casual employment creates all sorts of other insecurities for workers, such as limiting access to finance, secure housing and childcare. According to government estimates, there are over 850,000 casual employees who could be eligible to seek permanency under the legislation.
Gig worker or ‘employee-like’ reforms in the Closing Loopholes package aim to address low pay and poor working conditions experienced by workers on digital platforms who are engaged as independent contractors, are low-paid and/or have very limited bargaining power, such as delivery riders and rideshare drivers. The Fair Work Commission will now be able to make orders for minimum standards for these digital platform workers.
This ‘employee-like’ reforms extend the scope of Australia’s Fair Work Act to provide protections and rights to vulnerable workers, who are not employees. This should prove to be an effective response to the challenges facing vulnerable ‘gig workers as argued by the Centre for Future Work’s David Peetz has argued in a recent Centre for Future Work report on self-employment.
Closing Loopholes also includes a ‘right to disconnect’ from work, an initiative of the Greens, included to get the minor party’s support for the bill. In future, employees will have a right to refuse to respond to contact from their employers outside their scheduled hours if the contact is unreasonable.
Go Home on Time Day research conducted in 2022 by the Centre for Future Work found that 8 out of every 10 workers supported a right to disconnect. This level of support is not surprising, given the amount of unpaid overtime workers are doing. In 2023, the Centre for Future Work reported employees are, on average, working 5.8 hours a week — total of 280 hours, or 7 weeks, a year of unpaid overtime per employee.
The new right to disconnect is a practical solution for many employees that should also assist to shift cultures in workplaces where reliance on unpaid overtime has become the norm.
Some employer groups are arguing the Closing Loopholes legislation ‘goes too far’. To the contrary, if there is a weakness in the legislation, it is that it does not always account for power imbalances in the relationship between employees and employers. And this may limit the effectiveness of the some of the new provisions.
As a result of amendments put forward by independent David Pocock and the two Jacqui Lambie Network senators in response to employers’ concerns, a number of the bill’s provisions will be weaker in the final legislation than they were in the government’s original bill.
The amended bill passed by the Senate yesterday provides greater scope for employers to refuse casual employees’ requests for permanent status. The proposed prohibition on employers unreasonably contacting employees out of work hours has been removed. In the amended bill the prohibition is now on employers punishing employees who refuse to monitor and respond to unreasonable contact.
The Closing Loopholes part 2 reforms are welcome changes that will limit some of the damage and disadvantage caused by insecure work and the encroachment of (unpaid) work into life outside work.
New research by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute has revealed a disturbing new twist when it comes to unpaid overtime in Australia.
The Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute has urged the federal government to take charge of transitioning hundreds of workers into secure employment when the Eraring Power Station shuts down.
A new report on Australia’s standard of living has found that low real wages, underfunded public services and skyrocketing prices have left many families experiencing hardship and hopelessness.
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.
Business representatives sit down today with government and others to talk about productivity. Who, according to those business representatives, will need to change the way they do things?
Skilled health workers from Pacific Island countries are being poached to plug Australia’s shortage of care workers, leaving the health systems in their home countries on the brink of collapse, according to new research.
A new report on Australia’s standard of living has found that low real wages, underfunded public services and skyrocketing prices have left many families experiencing hardship and hopelessness.
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.
Business representatives sit down today with government and others to talk about productivity. Who, according to those business representatives, will need to change the way they do things?
A new report on Australia’s standard of living has found that low real wages, underfunded public services and skyrocketing prices have left many families experiencing hardship and hopelessness.
New research by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute has revealed a disturbing new twist when it comes to unpaid overtime in Australia.
This joint submission by the Centre for Future Work and the Nordic Policy Centre argues for immediate further reform to bring Australia’s Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme up to international best practice standards.
In this submission Fiona Macdonald, Centre for Future Work Policy Director and Alexia Adhikari, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Australia Institute, argue that current reforms don’t go far enough and are being implemented too slowly. A proposed entitlement of 26 weeks PPL to be phased in by July 2026 is far less than the international best practice standard of 52 weeks. The two-week ‘use it or lose it’ component reserved for each parent, and which is vital to encouraging more fathers to take leave to care for babies, is too short. Parental leave pay is too low, contributing to women’s economic disadvantage and inequality.
The submission recommends that the PPL scheme be improved and extended further, including by:
A review of the Albanese government’s labour and industrial relations reforms at the mid-point of its term in office concludes that the government deserves “positive marks” for several measures taken to strengthen collective bargaining and accelerate wage growth.
That assessment is contained in an article contained in a new special issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE), evaluating the government’s record on a range of issues halfway through its term. The special issue of JAPE was published on 18 December, and was edited by Prof Emeritus Frank Stilwell at the University of Sydney.
The article reviewing the government’s labour policies was co-authored by several staff at the Centre for Future Work, including Greg Jericho, Charlie Joyce, Fiona Macdonald, David Peetz, and Jim Stanford. It considers the impacts of several government initiatives, including:
The authors judge that the government’s labour reforms have achieved an “incremental but significant rebalancing of industrial relations.” They pointed to the acceleration of wage growth in Australia in the last year as evidence that workers have won important bargaining power. Wages are now growing at 4% year-over-year, according to the latest WPI data from the ABS — twice as fast as they did on average over the previous decade, which was marked by the slowest sustained wage growth in the postwar era.
The authors caution, however, that additional reforms are necessary to reverse the erosion of collective bargaining coverage and union membership, and ensure that workers have the bargaining power to improve wages, job security and working conditions.
“On the whole, the Albanese government has made cautious but useful progress on industrial relations and labour issues during its first year. However, it must be acknowledged that the overall labour relations regime in Australia remains heavily skewed in favour of employers,” the authors concluded.
Please see the full article, “Labour Policy,” by Greg Jericho, Charlie Joyce, Fiona Macdonald, David Peetz and Jim Stanford, at the link below. Fiona Macdonald also authored a second article in the special issue, dealing with the government’s reforms to care policies. To see the full collection of articles in the special issue, visit the JAPE website.
Employers Steal More than 280 Hours from Workers Each Year: Go Home on Time Day Report 2023
This year marks the fifteenth annual Go Home on Time Day (GHOTD), an initiative of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute that shines a spotlight on the maldistribution of working hours and the scale of unpaid overtime worked by Australians.
Following the disruptions of the COVID pandemic and historic falls in real wages over recent years, 2023’s stronger labour market conditions should benefit many workers. Wages have risen, labour force participation is relatively high and unemployment is low. With the introduction of the Government’s 2022 industrial relations reforms, workers are in a better position to bargain, as shown in recent bargaining outcomes and improving wages growth. However, wages are not keeping up with prices, inflation is high and, for many workers, conditions of work are far from satisfactory.
As this year’s GHOTD report shows, significant problems of overwork and underemployment co-exist, affecting many workers across all industries, occupations and age groups. Underemployment particularly affects workers in casual, temporary and other forms of insecure work, and it particularly affects workers in lower-paid roles. Women, younger workers, older workers and services workers are over-represented among those affected. At the same time long hours and overwork remain a problem, especially for full-time workers.
Experts from the Centre for Future Work recently made a submission to the Senate committee studying the “Closing Loopholes” bill, which would make several reforms to the Fair Work Act.
The submission was prepared by our Policy Director Dr Fiona Macdonald, Carmichael Distinguished Research Fellow Prof Em David Peetz, and Economist and Director Dr Jim Stanford.
Their submission emphasises:
• The importance of limiting insecure employment practices (such as casual employment, labour hire, and platform or ‘gig’ work), and providing full protections to workers in those arrangements.
• The importance of strong and well-resourced mechanisms to ensure the enforcement of these rules, and timely and effective recompense in cases when they are not.
• The importance of empowering trade unions and their delegates to play their full potential role in enforcing labour standards and ensuring fair compensation and treatment of workers.
Deteriorating Disability Worker Pay, Conditions Undermining NDIS
The disability support workforce is central to the effectiveness and sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
Hundreds of thousands of NDIS participants rely on this workforce to provide personal support and care on a daily basis.
The NDIS workforce is large and growing, currently employing about a quarter of a million workers, mostly women. Pay, working conditions and career opportunities in the disability support workforce are critical to the future of women’s economic equality in Australia.
It is a decade since the NDIS was first piloted, yet the promise for workers, that the scheme would translate into ‘greater pay, … better working conditions … (and) enough resources to do the job properly’ has not been fulfilled.
Rather, conditions of work in the NDIS are poor and deteriorating.
The design of the NDIS, with its market basis and poor and uneven regulatory oversight, has undermined fair pay and working conditions for disability support workers and is threatening workforce stability.
This briefing paper reviews this evidence and argues for significant reforms to address urgent problems arising from these design flaws and regulatory failures.
