Australia’s tax and transfer systems do less to redistribute income than those in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
- Economist and Director, Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute; Honorary Professor of Political Economy, University of Sydney
Since the pandemic Australian workers’ share of national income and purchasing power has fallen at an unprecedented rate. New policies are needed.
Australia’s protection, even celebration, of ‘free riders’ in industrial relations is driving union membership down to US levels.
À quelques jours du mouvement des syndicats français contre la réforme des retraites, les experts de The Conversation vous proposent un panorama mondial de la mobilisation sociale.
With real wages in many countries having been stagnant for years, the inflation surge has brought unions back to life.
An uncritical obsession with productivity threatens to distract us from the deeper problems Australia must face and fix.
Dark warnings about rising labour costs ignore the importance of profits in driving higher prices.
The buying power of wages shrank a record 2.7% over the year to March, calling into question assurances about the link between low unemployment and high wage growth.
If we want higher wages, we must win them through deliberate wage-boosting policies.
Some political and business leaders have, from the outset of COVID-19, downplayed the economic costs of mass illness. We’re now seeing the result.
A hike in the minimum wage could jeopardise Australia’s post-COVID recovery, says the Morrison government. That’s an outdated economic idea.
The Morrison Government has picked up its weapons again, with an industrial relations bill that will tip the scales further against employees.
Workers on awards and the minimum wage will get 3%. There was a case for awarding even more.
For economics to play a more helpful, critical role, it must abandon blind faith in the free market and embrace the social, historical, and environmental context in which economics actually happens.
Wage growth has been at near depression levels for half a decade. It needs a push.
While government payments and programs go some way to reducing inequality, the transformation of the labour market and its institutions has cut workers’ share of the pie to historic lows.
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