Assistant productivity minister Andrew Leigh says Australians have used about a quarter of the post-1980 productivity dividend to "work less", as he revisited a 1930 John Maynard Keynes prediction that people in 2030 "would inherit a world shaped by rising productivity and the promise of abundance".
The "labour productivity bubble" that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic can provide lessons for the future, and hybrid working can be more beneficial to productivity than wholly working from home or the workplace, according to a new Productivity Commission report.
Just 6% of clerical workers who seek WFH arrangements are knocked back by their employer, according to a new Swinburne University study commissioned by the FWC as part of the work from home test case.
Unprotected industrial action undermines collective negotiations because it is "directly contrary" to the Fair Work Act's bargaining regime, Deputy President Gerard Boyce has held in his reasons for finding the UWU's "unlawful" picketing of Woolworths distribution centres breached its good faith bargaining obligations.
Woolworths has today made an urgent application seeking that the FWC make orders to halt striking UWU members from "blocking access" to a Melbourne warehouse and three others in Victoria and NSW that has cost the business a claimed $50 million in sales.
The FWC has warned employers against giving "generic and blanket HR answers" when they provide their "reasonable business grounds" for knocking back flexibility requests, before ultimately rejecting a bid from a worker with challenging caring responsibilities to continue working entirely from home.
Boosted delegates' rights will make workplaces more cooperative, potentially increasing productivity and workers' openness to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, according to a report that also warns unions not to fall into a trap with their paid training leave win.
Productivity in the private sector has increased in the past three quarters on the back of a reduction in hours worked, while real labour costs have dropped for the past two quarters, according to ABS national accounts data released today.
Australia's labour productivity growth is close to the top of the league table for comparable advanced economies, trailing the leading US by a small margin over the past 15 years, according to a new FWC publication.
Businesses should consider running randomised trials to inform evidence-based policymaking in the workplace and improve productivity, Assistant employment minister Andrew Leigh has told a HR leadership conference in Sydney.
