As Australians debate the Fair Work Commission’ decision to reduce penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers, the Centre for Future Work has published new research on the prevalence of weekend work in other sectors of Australia’s economy – and the macroeconomic importance of extra income generated by weekend penalty pay. The analysis is based

Government and business leaders have proposed a range of possible “transition” mechanisms to ease the economic hardship, and defuse political anger, following the Fair Work Commission’s decision to cut penalty rates for work on Sundays and public holidays in the retail and hospitality industries.  This briefing note critically reviews several of these proposals.  Whether they

Today is International Women’s Day, a time to reflect on the continued inequality faced by women — including in the world of work.  Traditional measures of the “gender pay gap” indicate that women earn around 17 percent less than men, in ordinary pay in equivalent full-time positions.  But the situation is worse than that, because

On 2nd March The Australia Institute conducted an opinion poll of 754 residents of the State electorate of Braddon through ReachTEL, with representative samples by gender and age. The polling asked about the Fair Work Commissions ruling that Sunday and public holiday penalty rates should be reduced for full-time and part time workers in the

Remember when Prime Minister Turnbull and Immigration Minister Dutton blamed unionized construction workers for the high cost of housing in Australia? The idea that workers (not property speculators or bankers) are to blame for the property bubble is pretty far-fetched — in fact, it sparked a viral storm on social media, using the #blameunions hashtag.

The scope of the Inquiry is broad. In our submission we have chosen to focus on three areas of policy interest, drawing on our work over the past four years.

Australians may believe that they live in the land of the long weekend but new data lead The Australia Institute to question this assumption.

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.