Interview Jim Stanford, Director of Centre for Future Work, The Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute Tasmania’s research into poker machine reform was featured this week  on the ABC’s 7:30. Bill Browne explains to Dave that his polling of the Franklin electorate found that over 80% of Tasmanians want fewer poker machines in the state, or for poker machines to be banned altogether.

A surge in full-time employment over the past five months has raised optimism about the economy’s health, but is that positivity misplaced?

Former Reserve Bank boss Bernie Fraser has savaged the Fair Work Commission’s cuts to penalty rates and the Turnbull government’s company tax cuts, saying the measures will further entrench inequality but do little to produce jobs and growth.

Last weekend’s edition of The Saturday Paper featured an in-depth analysis by journalist Mike Seccombe, dissecting the Coalition government’s attempts to scapegoat welfare programs for Australia’s labour market and fiscal problems. The article included several statistics from the Centre for Future Work, as well as from our colleague Richard Denniss (Chief Economist at the Australia Institute).  With decent paid work increasingly hard to find, it’s no wonder the government targets income-support payments for working-age Australians: there are both political reasons (shifting blame) and a perverse economic logic (reinforcing the compulsion on desperate workers to accept any job, no matter how insecure or badly-paid) behind the government’s strategy.

Economist Jim Stanford, the director of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, has calculated that as many as two-thirds of Australian workers are now regularly expected to put in some form of unpaid overtime.

In today’s chronically depressed labour market, workers will go to unprecedented lengths to find and keep a job — even agreeing to work for free!  ABC’s RN program Future Tense recently explored the rising prevalence of unpaid work in Australia’s economy, including staying at work after hours, taking your work home with you (such as e-mails that never stop), and unpaid internships.

Regardless of who wins the Federal election, the major issue facing Australians is the future of work.

A new report from the Australia Institute shows that on a range of measures, the performance under the current government has been worse than that under Gillard, write Greg Jericho.

Australia now has the lowest proportion of manufacturing jobs in the OECD, according to a new report by the Centre for Future Work.

The report says the decline isn’t inevitable and can be reversed; several of our global peers are expanding their manufacturing sectors.

As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promotes his innovation agenda on the election campaign trail, the report finds the sector that is most innovation-intensive has been allowed to wither.

Kiribati’s president Anote Tong has through a letter asked prime ministers of the world to support a global moratorium on new coal mines, which Australian Richard Denniss has responded to with the seriousness it deserves. An increase of two degrees Celsius and rising sea levels would make it impossible to live in major parts of

Apparently its okay to lie to politicians and planning officials. But not to judges. Rod Campbell from The Australia Institute talks with Sue Reece about how Rio Tinto rapidly downgraded their economic projections about the benefits of the Warkwork coal mine expansion when taken to  court.