In the face of criticism from a peak employer body, Labor has maintained its support for an increase in the minimum wage matching the current inflation rate of 5.1%, while hinting that it will make further announcements before the Federal election on Saturday week.
As wage stagnation and cost-of-living issues continue to feature in the federal election campaign, a new report shows Australia has experienced the greatest deceleration in real pay growth in the OECD since 2013, despite its relatively strong employment growth and low unemployment, suggesting that policy and institutional factors are the main culprit, rather than market forces.
The next federal government should establish free early childhood education, amend the Fair Work Act to provide a legal right to a living wage for all workers, extend paid parental leave to 32 weeks and make the treasury responsible for "gender responsive budgeting", according to an academic group's report.
The FWC faces major changes after the May 21 Federal election, with the winner entrusted with appointing a successor to President Iain Ross and Labor pledging to "rebalance" the tribunal after a succession of appointments from an employer background.
The FSU has vowed to continue pressuring financial services employers to ditch pay secrecy clauses following last week's decisions by the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac to expunge the obligations from new and existing contracts.
In a clear effort to turn up the heat on IR reforms ahead of the federal election, the resource sector's peak employer body has urged all major parties to commit to introducing key parts of the Morrison Government's so-called Omnibus Bill that were hastily jettisoned last year.
New Zealand's Ardern Labour Government has introduced legislation to enable occupational and industry-wide bargaining where unions can demonstrate worker support, or it passes a public interest test.
The Federal Government is forecasting in its 2022-23 Budget that wage growth will increasingly outpace consumer price inflation for the next four financial years, after lagging badly in the current 12 months.
The ACTU has distributed to thousands of union member households a trio of election corflutes that seek to mock Prime Minister Scott Morrison over his 2019 Hawaiian holiday as the "black summer" bushfires roared, ahead of the Coalition's attempted spending counter-attack in today's Federal Budget
With the Coalition confirming it is still committed to remaining measures in its Omnibus Bill and Labor pledging to double down on insecure work, labour law academic Andrew Stewart says in a pre-Budget policy analysis that the nation faces a "big choice" on IR regulation.
