🧵 We’ve lost a lot of understanding of how IR works in Australia. An award increase via a full bench of the FWC increases the legal minimum paid to employees in a sector. #insiders 1/
Government can (and in my view, *should*) express a view in such cases. The FWC will take into account commitments made by government. Because they are effectively the funder 2/
In 2012 - in another major decision, but under a different section of the Act (equal remuneration then v work value now) in 2012. The federal government committed to fund outcomes for community service workers. 3/
This commitment was critical in facilitating (similarly vital, underpaid) workers in this sector achieving significant increases in their pay phased over several years - decided by the FWC 4/
Whoever wins the election, government must fund wage increases. But if government (whichever) doesn’t support an increase, it is likely to be very minimal (they set the $$ in the sector) /5
Added to all of this- the sector is in crisis and can’t get or keep the workers they need, partly because of job quality including low pay. Increasing wages, and provisioning to fund them, is urgent government business and is sensible socially and economically
5/
If media has questions on this, I recommend talking to some experts. Like- Profs @Meg_Smith61@DrFionaMac Sara Charlesworth, @ElizabethHill00. That way you’ll get the facts 🙏. 6/.
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First: provide the high quality flexible working options that employees need and want. There is skyrocketing demand if designed properly it will boost participation. We don’t mean dead end ‘bad flex’ 2/6
Second: build good, secure jobs into the organisation, supply chain and labour market. Highly feminised jobs in care, health, education need urgent improvement 3/6
#equalpayday today. Full time working women in Australia earn 14% less than full time working men.
There’s a lot we can do about the #genderpaygap. Here’s a start. 1. Better value the work done in highly feminised occupations. Workers in the health and care professions perform enormously skilled and economically important work. They are underpaid. #paythemmore 1/
2. Organisation leaders should undertake a gender pay #audit to diagnose #genderpaygap drivers. @wgea has great resources for this. Because this is such a pervasive problem, there will be issues, be open to that and #actonthedata 2/
Very sad today that academics at our wonderful universities are having to work out whether to back @NTEUNational and VC proposals to take significant pay cuts to sandbag jobs. 1/?
I’m also extremely angry. The reason staff are having to make these choices is because the federal government changed the rules THREE TIMES to keep unis out of #JobKeeper (never forget that peeps 🤓) 2/?
I’ve read the proposal and I’ve been thinking it over all day. I’ve also watched people (from in the sector and outside) having slings at colleagues and our union here all day. That is really (additionally) pissing me off (sorry, rarely swear on twitter, less so irl) 3/?