With the Federal election just days away, Queensland workplace law expert Denise O’Reilly, Principal at O’Reilly Workplace Law, has shared her summary of the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP’s) key industrial relations (IR) policies that she thinks are of interest, and of concern, for business.

The system has failed early childhood educators – “the parent’s know it, the community knows it, everybody knows it” – Australian Labor Party (ALP) Leader Bill Shorten has said during a doorstop interview while explaining the ALP’s strategy to improve wages while reducing the cost of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services for families.

While we were enjoying our Christmas holiday, the Fair Work Commission made a decision on 31 December 2018 that has an Australian-wide impact on enterprise bargaining voting rights for casual employees, Human Resources Director has reported. The decision reached could have a large impact on the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector, which has a large casualised workforce.

Average weekly earnings are higher for men working full-time positions and are continuing to increase at a higher percentage than the average weekly earnings for women working full-time, latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ biennial Employee Earnings and Hours survey has shown.

As the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector continue to push for a fairer wage, and more equitable employment conditions, Oxfam Australia have added a briefing paper to the conversation, highlighting that the top one per cent of Australian income earners continued to own more wealth than the bottom 70 per cent combined in 2018.