Industrial relations
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IAN McAULEY. Brexit, Trump and the Lucky Country 1 – Who’s been left behind?
In “developed” countries the benefits of 35 years of economic growth have been unevenly distributed. Many people who once had well-paid manufacturing jobs and many who live in the country have fallen behind. While this has been most starkly manifest in the US, it is also happening in Australia. Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. Brexit, Trump and the Lucky Country 3 – Globalization takes the rap, unfairly
Globalization has been only one of the developments that has led to widening inequality and social exclusion. Countries that have globalized have also introduced a raft of neoliberal domestic policies, against which people are reacting. Continue reading »
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BOB KINNAIRD. Indian IT professionals on rock bottom 457 wages undermine Turnbull’s ‘innovation’ dream
The Coalition’s cheap labour 457 visa wage policy is destroying jobs for young Australians lured into studying IT courses under the Turnbull government’s high profile ‘Innovation’ push… Indian 457 visa IT workers are being approved at much lower rates than experienced Australian IT professionals and even new IT graduates. Continue reading »
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DAVID PEETZ. The battle over the Building and Construction Commission isn’t finished yet
Now that the ABCC will mostly be a mere shadow of its former self, the Building Code becomes an even more important point of distinction. … It is the identity and ideology of the Director of the ABCC that matters a lot more than the underpinning legislation. Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull will do anything to secure an outcome.
Malcolm Turnbull’s experience in negotiation has been in the boardroom of Goldman Sachs, but the atmosphere of the Senate crossbench is more akin to that of the Istanbul Souk. Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. Holden cars, AWA TVs, Chesty Bonds underwear: Manufacturing and globalisation
Ian McAuley argues that it has not been globalisation and trade that has been the biggest factor displacing jobs in manufacturing. It has been automation. Continue reading »
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TIM HARCOURT. Trump, Trade and jobs
Australia needs to remember that embracing open markets can only be done with well developed market institutions and social safety nets. Whether you love or loathe the President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump can get an economic policy issue media attention, as well as himself. Take the issue of trade and jobs, for example. Continue reading »
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DAVID PEETZ. An industrial relations furphy.
The media excitement surrounding the theatrics of former Senator Bob Day and current Senator Rod Culleton seemed to obscure the real issues facing the federal government’s industrial relations legislation. The government failed to put bills re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and a new, government-appointed Registered Organisations Commission, onto the notice paper for Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Donald Trump – a false prophet and implications for Australia.
Trump prides himself in being a change-agent, but he really wants to restore the past and protect privilege. He will also do a great deal of social damage. Analysis of the US election tells us that many American ‘working class whites’ were sick of elites, whether they were in business, the media, Wall St, Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Our Working Holiday Programs have lost their way.
I have been an advocate of Working Holiday Programs (WHPs) for over 40 years. These programs were an excellent opportunity to ‘foster closer ties and cultural exchanges between Australia and partner countries with particular emphasis on young adults.’. The programs were reciprocal. But the nature of WHP’s have changed dramatically in recent years. In Continue reading »
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NATALIA NIKOLOVA, ROBYN JOHNS, WALTER JARVIS. We need to change more than pay for executives to do better.
The pay of executives of a company, whether in salary, bonuses or other types of remuneration, is usually justified as an incentive to improve the financial performance of a company. This has led to ever more complex performance packages with increasing percentage of variable, performance-based payments. But what is increasingly evident is that this Continue reading »
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JULIE WALKER. Australia should compare CEO and average worker pay like the US and UK.
Australia should follow the lead of the United States in requiring public companies to disclose how much their CEO makes each year directly compared to an “average” rank and file employee. Ballooning executive pay contributes to income inequality and the CEO pay ratio provides a measure of the extent of the pay gap between Continue reading »
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BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalition’s Backpacker tax and work rights package
The Coalition’s backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australia’s working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). …. The Coalition’s main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. ‘Faster economic growth demands better chief executives’.
There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities .‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’. He Continue reading »
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MARIE SEGRAVE. Exploitation of foreign workers.
On Tuesday night, SBS’ Insight program aired concerns about temporary migrant labour exploitation. These issues tend to come to national attention when a particular case is exposed, but mostly they are not seen as national priorities – and, as such, the response is generally reactive rather than proactive. The exploitation to have attracted attention Continue reading »
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CHRISTINE DUFFIELD & MARY CHIARELLA. The predicted nursing shortage: strategies and solutions
The nursing workforce The nursing workforce comprises 3 regulated groups: Nurse Practitioners (NPs), Registered Nurses (RNs) and Enrolled Nurses (ENs). Nurses recognise that other unregulated groups of healthcare workers (for example Assistants in Nursing (AINs)) perform nursing care, and the research is clear that they require support from registered nurses (Duffield et al, 2014). Continue reading »
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DAVID PEETZ. The penalty rates time-bomb is ticking.
A looming decision on weekend penalty rates presents problems for both major parties in the lead-up to Australia’s federal election. The Fair Work Commission seems likely to hand down its decision in the controversial case soon after the federal election. Nobody knows what the commission’s decision on penalty rates in the retail and hospitality industries Continue reading »
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BOB KINNAIRD. Like earlier Free Trade Agreements, the new FTA with Singapore continues to waive labour market testing which has been designed to protect Australian workers and students.
Prime Minister Turnbull announced the Australia-Singapore ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ (CSP) on 6 May last, just a few days before he called the 2 July election. Cynics will suspect the timing and also see the Singapore announcement as something of a consolation prize. The much bigger FTA fish for the Turnbull government was the elusive agreement Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The 2016-17 Budget. Part 1 of 2.
The Turnbull Government’s Budget for 2016-17 reflects an essentially ‘steady as she goes’ fiscal strategy. Not that that is a fault – indeed it can be a virtue, especially when matched against the give-aways in other previous pre-election budgets. Furthermore, we could not have realistically expected any other sort of Budget, given the extent to Continue reading »
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David Peetz. Having a say at work.
There’s a phrase you sometimes hear about the workplace: “leave your brains at the gate”. Workers use it to summarise the dismissive view their bosses have about the contribution employees can make – and about how much say workers have in what they do at work. Not all bosses are like that. But it seems Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Royal commissions – partisan politics or public interest.
Australia has had a string of politically inspired and often useless royal commissions. The fiasco surrounding Dyson Heydon’s acceptance of an invitation to speak at a Liberal Party dinner made it even more likely that his enquiry into trade unions would be quickly discounted, except for those who wanted to pursue a political agenda against Continue reading »
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Victoria Rollison. The WorkChoices Zombie
Let’s put aside the irony of a Liberal government, the preacher of the ills of ‘big government’, spending $45 million to reach its expensive Royal Commission tentacles into the operation of trade unions. Let’s put aside the obvious political nature of such a witch-hunt, designed to reduce the power of unions to negotiate on behalf Continue reading »
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