Unions and Labor have a long history of working together, but if the ALP wins office, unions will have to compete with many other groups to get what they want.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Employment Michaelia Cash during debate over the 2017 Australian Building and Construction Commission Bill.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Lobbying in Australia is a multi-billion dollar industry which employs a sophisticated strategy to win public opinion and political favours for its clients or members. Here’s how.
Just after the second world war, union membership was almost 65% of the workforce. Now it is just 15%.
Wikimedia Commons
A diminishing membership base, changes to labour and industry and heightened political attention has left the once-powerful trade union movement flailing.
The Howard-era WorkChoices redefined the terms around which the debate on workplace relations reform has been couched.
AAP/Andrew Brownbill
Echoes of WorkChoices? The Coalition is keen to avoid any whiff of the failed policy, but some of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations have a strong flavour of it.
Cafe workers are among many that stand to lose Sunday penalty rates.
Felipe Neves/Flickr
David Peetz, Griffith University and Rob Bray, Australian National University
Sunday penalty rates will go under Productivity Commission recommendations, but overall our workplace system was basically operating well, it found.
Joe Hockey, pictured arriving for the Liberal leadership spill in February, would not be delivering his second budget had Tony Abbott lost that vote.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
In just a year, the Abbott government has gone from a radical nation-changing budget to promising a ‘dull’ one. Are we to believe the ideological zeal is gone, or has the survival instinct kicked in?
The Productivity Commission has attempted to move beyond the WorkChoices rhetoric.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
The release of the Productivity Commission’s five issues papers on Australia’s workplace relations framework has already fanned inevitable claims from the federal opposition and unions that it will pave…
Individual contracts are coming back - but not as we knew them.
AAP/Julian Smith
The government is proposing amendments to the Fair Work Act, including to the operation of “individual flexibility arrangements” (IFAs). The amendments are attracting a lot of attention, including from…
Flexible work practices: for employees or employers?
Tracey Nearmy/AAPImage
If you were to choose one buzzword that, despite its vagueness, has dominated industrial relations debate over three decades, it would be “flexibility”. It has emerged again in rhetoric surrounding Toyota’s…
Calls by AWU chief Paul Howes for a “grand compact” are fanciful, but he’s right we need to shift our thinking away from a focus on yet another round of IR reform.
AAP
It is easy to see why media coverage of Paul Howes’ National Press Club address has focused on his claims that wage growth has been too high in some areas and that the adversarial industrial relations…
The coalition’s industrial relations policy is likely to disappoint small business.
AAP
Tony Abbott’s industrial relations strategy has received a less than rapturous response from both business and trade unions. The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group have criticised…
Tony Abbott’s industrial relations policy launch attempts to neutralise Labor’s advantage and bed down fears of a resurgence of WorkChoices.
Industrial relations is the one area of public policy that traditionally marks a major fault line between the Coalition parties and Labor. It is also one area of policy where neither side finds it easy…
The Coalition has ruled out increasing GST, despite calls from former Prime Minister John Howard for GST to apply to food. But could a policy change be in the wings?
AAP
There is almost unanimous agreement among mainstream economists, tax experts, Treasury, business and even politicians (albeit very quietly) that the Goods and Services Tax will have to be increased and…
If the government is serious about maintaining its economic prosperity into the future, it needs to address Australia’s historically poor productivity growth.
Ann Douglas
The majority of Australians would prefer higher living standards. This can take the form of better access to better healthcare services and education, better environmental outcomes, more time for friends…