Think about your own life. What would you do if the full-time working week was reduced to 30 hours?

Workers find it hard to engage in conversations about the future – and this includes talking about climate change – if they are being forced to only ever focus on their lives from minute to minute, day to day. This is one of the impacts of insecure work. Climate change needs action and we need to create affordable renewable options for ordinary people.

Ultimately, it is the public that takes up the slack of a low minimum wage. A report from the Centre for Labor Research and Education found low wages paid by businesses are costing taxpayers in the United States nearly $153 billion a year. After decades of wage cuts and health benefit rollbacks, more than half of all state and federal spending on public assistance programs is going to working families to meet basic needs.

40-odd years ago Australia was considered a workers' paradise. After hard-won battles, unions had seen legislation gradually introduced for paid sick leave, paid annual leave and paid public holidays, as well an eight hour day and penalty rates for those called on to give up time with their families to work on Sundays and public holidays. It's hard to believe that we have given up so much without a fight.

While suspicions of vote-buying have been running rampant, more alarmingly are the claims that worker conditions on Qatar’s World Cup sites border on slave labour, and reports of significant death counts have seemingly fallen on deaf ears at FIFA. On these building sites, huge workforces are attempting to get the country ready in time for the prestigious tournament. Yet reports coming out of the area claim that many foreign workers are forced to surrender their passports to their employers and are paid as little as $50 a week.

In a recent Slate essay, Rebecca Schumann, a visiting assistant professor of German at Ohio State University, demonstrates tidily the alleged lure of academic life: ‘Who wouldn’t want a job where you only have to work five hours a week, you get summers off, your whole job is reading and talking about books, and you can never be fired?’

In 2011, I left Perth for Houston Texas to begin the internationally prestigious Masters of Fine Arts in poetry. As part of my funding arrangement I was offered a teaching assistantship, and at the time I thought this was a great deal.

In addition to shopping centres, Australian universities are increasingly contracting out work like cleaning and security. These are roles that were previously subject to the same enterprise agreements as the library staff or school administrators, who had comparatively good conditions because of long-term union gains, but are now contracted to companies that must win tenders through bidding the lowest cost.

On 16 May 2012 there was a reunion at the Australian Council of Trade Unions congress gala dinner. The crucial players involved in the development of the ACTU and ALP Prices and Incomes Accord of the 1980s – and Bill Kelty, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Laurie Carmichael – were all there. The keynote addresses were from Kelty and Keating, with the latter asked to commemorate the former’s work in the labour movement.

If it achieves nothing else, by locking out all its staff, Qantas has shown why the Occupy movement matters. Naturally, the usual performing seals will bark and clap their fins in the Murdoch press about how Alan Joyce had no option. He had to crush the union, you see – it’s that old Vietnam logic […]

Last month, Overland invited Elena Jeffreys, of Scarlet Alliance, to participate in a debate in our print journal that proposed that the Left should support stricter regulation of the sex industry. Unfortunately, for various reasons, the debate didn’t come to fruition. However, Elena gave us permission to publish her initial argument here on the blog. […]

When the CPSU took 12 government agencies to Fair Work Australia (FWA) a couple of weeks ago in a dispute over negotiating enterprise agreement, it barely rated a mention in the press. And, if the comments in the Sydney Morning Herald’s online edition are anything to go by (‘The Australian Public Service might go on […]

The federal industrial relations tribunal, Fair Work Australia, has passed down an exciting and historical Decision on women’s wages. More than a year ago, the Australian Services Union brought an application for an equal remuneration order to the tribunal. If granted, the order would apply to employees of non-government employers in the social, community and […]

Last year a friend invited me to what I thought was going to be a lecture by the outspoken feminist Professor Sheila Jeffreys titled: ‘Prostitution in St. Kilda, How The Law Has Failed Sex Workers.’

For over 60 years, the International Labour Organization has been trying to set an international standard for domestic workers. Overwhelmingly female, often migratory, and typically racialised, these are the workers who raise the children of wealthy families, look after the disabled and the elderly in their homes, work as drivers, gardeners and live-in cleaners. And […]

I recently saw a sign indicating that Sydney Buses is soon going to do a trial where the M10 bus service has wireless internet on board for six months. This was a simultaneous ‘yay!’ and ‘ohhh’ moment for me. The former because it’s a great idea we should be getting into, and the second because, […]