With the government’s Draft Tourism Transformation Plan now out for consultation, the hospitality industry has an opportunity to clean up long-standing concerns over wages and conditions for workers.
Reports of big university budget surpluses appear to undermine calls for their federal funding to increase. But a closer look at how the surpluses were achieved reveals why change is needed.
The problem of insecure employment for academics came to a head during the pandemic. The neglect of this issue is eroding our intellectual capital along with education and employment opportunities.
More than a dozen Australian universities have been publicly accused of underpaying staff. Some have paid millions in backpay after audits. And a big factor in wage theft is the rise of casualisation.
High-end restaurant Dinner by Heston Blumenthal has allegedly underpaid staff by $4 million. Our research finds wage theft is accepted as the industry norm.
The heads of the Business Council of Australia and Australian Retailers Association are among those blaming “inadvertent payroll mistakes"on an overly complex industrial relations system.
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Underpaying workers has become rampant in Australia.
While Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton boast about border protection, just quietly the numbers of asylum seekers have increased to a record 27,931 in 2017-18.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Immigration has featured as an issue in every Australian election since 2001. But the numbers often tell a different story from the political posturing.
Hospitality union Hospo Voice stages a protest about wage theft in Melbourne’s iconic Degraves Street in October 2018. Five venues in the well-known cafe precinct were accused of underpaying workers.
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As many as half of all temporary migrant workers are being underpaid. After a two-year inquiry, the Migrant Workers’ Taskforce has provided a blueprint to do something about it.
Labor laws are often based on how we worked decades ago.
AP Photo/Richard Sheinwald
Wage theft and exploitation are rampant in certain industries. Certifying those that commit to fair work conditions could be key to fixing the problem.