The Albanese Government has ratified ILO conventions setting a minimum working age and seeking to prevent workplace harassment and violence, with Skills and Training Minister Brendan O'Connor telling this year's international labour conference that tripartism "has never been so important".
Employers who pressure migrant workers into breaching their temporary visa conditions face criminal charges and increased fines under changes soon to be introduced by the Albanese Government.
A two-year pay freeze is set to be imposed on NSW politicians earning more than a base salary and the State's high-earning bureaucrats as the Minns Labor Government vows to redirect the savings to "essential service" workers such as teachers and nurses.
Former ACTU manager Mary Doyle has used her first parliamentary speech to urge Australians to "re-embrace" concepts of welfare and social security, drawing on her experiences of having an alcoholic father on an invalid pension and requiring support as she recovered from cancer surgery to aver that "these are not dirty words".
The MBA is urging the Albanese Government to drop its plan to empower the FWC to deal with "employee-like" work, but says that if it is determined to go ahead, then the new jurisdiction should be confined to digital platform workers.
New NSW Labor upper house member and former IR academic Sarah Kaine has used her inaugural parliamentary speech to decry the "cult of individualism" that has led to the loss of labour market safety nets, while hailing the recent political shift towards restoring workplace "dignity".
