Employment & Workers' Rights
August 2004
Work and family futures: How young Australians plan to work and care
A study of the attitudes of teenagers showing that the gender wars are set to continue into the next generation with boys and girls making conflicting plans about who will do the housework and look after the children.
May 2004
Carpe Diem? The Deferred Happiness Syndrome
Deferred Happiness Syndrome affects 30% of Australians and occurs when employees are not satisfied with work but do it to achieve happiness later on, often through money and material interests. This often results in downshifters that voluntarily reduce working hours to ensure better lifestyles.
February 2004
Can’t Buy Me Love? Young Australians’ views on parental work, time, guilt and their own consumption
Examines the perspective of young people about their parents’ paid and unpaid work, its implications for their lives and the links between work and consumption.
Getting a Life: Understanding the downshifting phenomenon in Australia
Explores in detail the life changes and attitudes of 20 downshifters to answer the questions prompted by the first study on downshifting completed in January 2003. The in-depth interviews were augmented by four focus groups held across the country and aimed to explain why people downshift, how they change, how others react, what are their
July 2003
Annual leave in Australia: An analysis of entitlements, usage and preferences
Australians may believe that they live in the land of the long weekend but new data lead The Australia Institute to question this assumption.
The double dividend: an analysis of the job creation potential of purchasing additional holiday leave
More than half of the workforce would forgo a 4% pay rise, if it guaranteed them an extra two weeks leave annually. This would create approx. 146,000 new jobs, and help address the over 1 million underemployed and unemployed Australians.
February 2001
Measuring Employment in the 21st Century: New measures of underemployment and overwork
The system of labour market statistics in Australia is in urgent need of reform. In addition to calling for the collection of new data on the desired amount of work for all workers, this report outlines the benefits of work sharing, and suggests mechanisms for achieving a fairer distribution of work.
June 2000
Avoiding Recessions and Australian Long-Term Unemployment
This paper examines the relationship between recessions and the size and duration of long-term unemployment. The results should leave us in no doubt that just a few poor years of economic growth have very significant medium-term implications for long-term unemployment.
September 1999
Public Expenditure on Services for Indigenous People: Education, Employment, Health and Housing
This study comprises a comprehensive assessment of public spending on education, employment, health and housing services for indigenous Australians compared with non-indigenous Australians. It shows that, contrary to claims made recently, public spending on programs for indigenous people is not excessive, and the advantages indigenous people gain from this expenditure are minuscule compared with the
March 1999
October 1996
The Path to Full Employment: A talk to the ACOSS Congress
The increasing growth in Australian cannot be matched with employment. To counter oncoming large unemployment there needs to be a ‘work-sharing scheme.’ Such a scheme would allow more jobs and give workers more leisure time, thus solving the rise in unemployment.
June 1996
Redistributing Work: Solutions to the paradox of overwork and unemployment in Australia
At a time of high and chronic unemployment, Australia is also faced with a crisis of overwork. Work-related stress and illness have been intensifying while the social problems associated with mass unemployment multiply. There are a number of flexible work schemes operating or under negotiation in Australia, but so far they affect very few employees.