The Federal Government succeeded in passing their Respect@Work Bill which legislates for about five and a half of the 55 recommendations in the Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s landmark inquiry into sexual harassment at work. The ACTU pressed for amendments to the Bill for the full implementation of the Respect at Work report.
Australian workers used to have secure jobs with secure pay but the Federal Government keeps putting big business ahead of workers. Let's do something, before it's too late - if we don't act now, reliable work will be gone for good.
Join us and together we can restore job stability for all.
Casual Work
Unions and business are committed to working cooperatively with governments to keep workplaces safe and to achieve the highest possible rates of vaccination though building confidence in the vaccination program and supporting workers to get vaccinated. The ACTU and the BCA acknowledge that the Federal Government’s COVID-19 vaccination policy is that it should be free and voluntary. We believe that for the overwhelming majority of Australians your work or workplace should not fundamentally alter the voluntary nature of vaccination.
The ACTU has called on the Morrison Government not to ratify the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, which includes Myanmar’s military junta, at the JSCOT inquiry. RCEP has been negotiated behind closed doors between Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Despite its size, there is no evidence that the RCEP agreement will benefit Australian workers.
The ACTU argues that ratifying RCEP will:
Reactive economic policy is no safeguard in a public health crisis. From yawning gaps in the vaccination rollout to reactively cobbling together a below-poverty-line disaster payment during Victoria’s lockdown, the brunt of the Federal Government’s refusal to actively plan for public health during a pandemic has consistently fallen on those already hardest hit. As case numbers rise in New South Wales and other states remain on the alert, the Federal Government shows little attempt to meaningfully break this cycle.
The passage of the Your Future, Your Super Bill last month is another attack on working people and their retirement savings. The legislation schackles workers to their current funds and new workers to their first fund, introduce performance benchmarks for super funds, and impose onerous regulations on industry super funds which for-profit funds will be functionally exempt from. The measure to schackle workers to their current fund, or first fund, upends industrial default selection.
Mark Perica (CPSU Federal Office Senior Legal Officer) is again representing Australian workers at the ILO. His blog continues. CAS Journal : midnight, Friday 11 June 2021 Tonight, I had my intervention on Cambodia which is a case involving serious contraventions of the freedom of association convention C87. A couple of days ago, we had our co-ordination meeting of the workers group on Cambodia which ,of course, included the delegation of Cambodian workers. We are making the case for them. We have to be careful not to say anything that causes someon
The Federal Government’s 2021 budget decisions will not improve the central issues facing working Australians - insecure work and low wage growth. Wage growth is forecast at negative or flat, locking in declining living standards for years leaving workers with no real pay rise for the whole time this Government has been in power. The women’s budget measures are small, delayed and piecemeal, and will do very little to improve the working lives of Australian women.
We remember the workers who have died at work every April 28 and rededicate ourselves to fight like hell for the living. The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the critical importance of workplace safety for the physical and mental health of workers.
The ACTU has urged the Senate crossbench to reject the Federal Government's Superannuation legislation in its entirety stating the Your Future, Your Super Bill remains fatally flawed. If Your Future, Your Super is passed the Government would staple workers to dud funds and to funds which have not been subjected to performance benchmarks from the 1st of July 2021, condemning more than 1 million workers to a poorer retirement. While default products will be benchmarked in July, the scrutiny of largely bank-owned for-profit Choice products is baselessly delayed until 2022.
