Later-in-life events rather than child-rearing alone contribute to women retiring with lower super balances, and the government needs to take "urgent action" to prevent women from continuing to fall behind, a new report finds.
The proportion of employees working from home in 2023 has hardly eased since the COVID-19 lockdown, with 35% of workers doing some WFH and 15% performing most of their hours away from the office, according to the latest HILDA report.
The SDA is calling for stronger regulation of the retail sector to protect workers from psychosocial hazards linked to excessive workloads, understaffing, and customer abuse, with safety rails around the use of AI.
The Albanese Government should collaborate with business groups and unions to establish an independent digital and AI transition body charged with preventing workers being left behind, according to a Jobs and Skills Australia report suggesting the changes are more likely to "augment" jobs than take them over.
FWC President Adam Hatcher has conceded the tribunal can juggle only so many balls, placing on ice its scrutiny of potential gender bias in awards' overtime provisions after the publication of an internal research paper.
The Albanese Government should force companies to share productivity gains with employees via higher pay rises, extra leave or shorter hours, according to research using the retail sector to challenge "conventional wisdom" that productivity growth flows through to workers.
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".
New university research says "intermediaries" play a crucial role in holding employers to account under gender pay gap reporting regimes such as Australia's, that unlike Europe's, don't require laggards to take corrective measures.
