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.
The first public policy changes to boost workers' power in more than 30 years - under the Albanese Government - have coincided with an increase in nominal and real wages and a rise in workers' share of the fruits of the economy, according to the Centre for Future Work's David Peetz.
Ahead of the May 3 poll, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is supporting a real pay increase in this year's minimum wage case, going further than his 2022 election call for the FWC to ensure workers' pay not "go backwards".
An IR expert is anticipating a pre-election policy announcement tackling post-employment restraints, as new research reveals their chilling effect on job mobility, the financial toll on workers, and the struggle for those affected to understand and negotiate the restrictions.
