For most Australians, a crisis was something that happened to other people, in other places, at another time. COVID-19 changed that perception. A crisis had arrived on our doorstep and it required an immediate and urgent response.
Fortunately, Australia’s early public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic was successful, delaying the emergence of community transmission and giving our health systems more time to prepare. Yet at the same time, the health crisis has exposed fault lines in our society and economy. As we commence the economic reconstruction, we cannot be blind to the need for fundamental change to address inequality and climate change.
Long before COVID-19 arrived, Australia was in the throes of a worsening crisis of wealth and income inequality. Increasing numbers of underemployed workers and people in insecure, low-paid jobs were progressively joining the ranks of the unemployed, pensioners, people with disabilities and sole parents stuck in grinding poverty. The summer preceding the pandemic saw the crisis of climate change hit Australia with brutal force as catastrophic bushfires wreaked havoc on our environment and regional communities.
COVID-19 has seen rare levels of collaboration between the federal and state governments, unions and business in forming emergency and public policy responses, while Australians have demonstrated solidarity with each other by tolerating severe disruption in all aspects of their lives in a collective effort to stall the virus.
By finally instituting a form of wage subsidy in response to the campaign by unions, the government stopped an initial economic tidal wave of despair and devastation from washing away the jobs and wellbeing of many families and communities across Australia. Yet the flawed design of JobKeeper left too many people to fall between the cracks. Casual workers with less than one year with the same employer, workers on international visas, and those in higher education, the arts and entertainment or employed by a company owned by a foreign government were simply abandoned.
Fundamental gaps have now appeared in the government’s medium-term economic strategy that threaten to undo much of what was achieved in the early weeks of the pandemic. We risk coming out of the health crisis with many people, particularly women, young people and those in the most insecure jobs in our labour market, facing even greater disadvantage than they were before the arrival of the virus. Despite the rhetoric claiming ‘We’re all in this together’, the pandemic and the recession it brought about have not treated us equally: women, for example, have seen a disproportionate impact, with a greater loss of paid work and an increase in unpaid work. Their over-representation in insecure jobs in the sectors hardest hit by the economic shutdown has seen a higher proportion of both jobs and hours lost.
This has been a moment of truth about the way Australia works, and why it doesn’t really work at all for millions of people. The pandemic has revealed that the foundations of our economy are built on the empty promise of trickle-down wealth and trapdoor economics. As ordinary Australians have for years endured stagnant wages and increasingly precarious working conditions, they have been asked to believe that the consolidation of wealth for the few will one day lead to a greater share of wealth for the many. It’s clear that this trickle-down theory is a scam.
Meanwhile, the epidemic of insecure work that has become the daily reality for 32 per cent of the workforce—those in casual and contract jobs, gig economy workers or people caught in the grip of labour-hire work—was revealed to be a trap. The moment Australia’s economy hit the brakes as the pandemic struck, through the trapdoor they fell, tumbling into economic and financial distress with no safety net. No sick pay, holiday pay, long-service or family leave. No redundancy payment to tide them over for a few weeks and, for the vast majority, no access to the government’s JobKeeper payment. All that was offered to them was a place in the unemployment line with tens of thousands of other workers in the same predicament. The images of massive queues outside Centrelink offices across Australia in March were a shocking affront to our notion of fairness for all.
We must rebuild our economy and society to give meaning to the Australian notion of the ‘fair go’ and ensure that no one is left behind. That’s why Australian unions have outlined a jobs and economic recovery plan that doesn’t just try to snap us back to where we were before COVID-19, but instead aims to deal with the longstanding structural flaws in the Australian economy and society. We must rebuild our domestic economy and our local communities in a way that delivers a fairer society, more job security, stronger sustainable industries, rising incomes and a healthy environment.
This is the union movement’s eight-point plan for a better, fairer and more secure nation.
1. Create better jobs
Government and the private sector must work together with the union movement to create more secure, decent jobs in the Australian economy, with fair pay and conditions and good employment security. The federal government should set a target to create 2 million new permanent jobs by the end of 2021 and halve the number of insecure jobs. This would bring us close to full employment and remove much of the economic insecurity of casual work.
It is not enough to talk about ‘jobs and growth’. The economy will not grow, and living standards will not rise, if too many jobs are insecure and do not provide the confidence and income upon which to build a good life. A secure job is a permanent role in which workers are entitled to a living wage, paid leave, public holidays, occupational health and safety protections, and the right to collective bargaining.
2. Higher wages
After years of stagnation and decline, we must focus on actively lifting wages and living standards. The crisis has highlighted the essential nature of the work of many of the lowest-paid and most insecure workers in Australia. It has been the health workers, supermarket staff, those in transport and logistics, agricultural workers, aged-care workers, teachers, early childhood educators, cleaners, delivery drivers and many others who have kept Australia functioning through the pandemic. We must ensure these workers are properly valued and remunerated.
This will require providing access to collective industry bargaining, reducing insecure work and establishing a living wage. It demands the right to guaranteed conversion from casual to permanent employment, limits on consecutive contracts, and rights for all workers, not just those narrowly defined as employees. Now is not the time to stall or deny increases to the minimum wage—not least because every cent that goes to low-income workers is spent in our economy, strengthening consumer demand and stimulating economic growth.
3. Stronger public and community services
Despite the best efforts of individual public sector workers, the failure of Centrelink to cope with the initial surge in demand for the JobSeeker payment, the massive miscalculation in the cost of the JobKeeper program, and the failure of public health and border security agencies to contain the COVID-19 outbreak resulting from the docking of the Ruby Princess cruise liner in Sydney are just a few examples of our public services being ill-prepared for the impact of the pandemic in its early days. After years of running down our public sector, we must now strengthen and invest in the essential services and institutions that are our first line of defence against external shocks such as COVID-19, bushfires and drought.
COVID-19 revealed that some critical services that we have relied upon the market to deliver—such as aviation, research and development, regional media, energy, utilities, transport, education and health—need more active ownership, regulation and investment by government. The rebuilding of our public sector to ensure that capacity is available where and when it is needed requires us to jettison long-held prejudices and ideological battles in the pursuit of high-quality, effective, efficient and sustainable services. Outsourcing the delivery of essential public services to private operators has not served the public interest. Rather than capping staffing levels and reducing spending in the public service, we must reverse the use of insecure temporary and rolling contracts, and invest in a robust, resilient and accessible public sector to deliver essential services to all Australians.
4. Nation-building investment
Now is the time for government to support nation-building projects and services that create decent jobs and set Australia up for a better future. The Great Depression saw the Victorian Government build the Great Ocean Road, while after World War II the nation embarked upon the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. We must take advantage of the historically low cost of government debt to invest in national projects that create a lasting benefit to the nation and hundreds of thousands of new, secure jobs.
Investment in public services and social infrastructure is just as critical as investment in public infrastructure, and necessary to ensure that we don’t further entrench gender inequality. Investment in the care economy holds the promise of significant social and economic returns as wages are lifted for low-paid women, and others are enabled to increase their labour force participation. Key priorities could include government investment in public transport projects; intercity fast rail; sustainable public and community housing; new hospitals, schools and technical colleges; and electricity transmission network upgrades.
5. Public investment in education and training
Just as important as investing in physical infrastructure is public investment in early childhood, school, vocational and higher education. The architecture of our education system has become too reliant on marketising education as an export commodity. The reality is that as we haul ourselves out of this recession and move to a low-carbon economy, our nation will require workers with new skills in more industries than ever before.
Public investment in tertiary and vocational education delivers a high rate of return in both social and economic benefits. We must rebuild Australia’s technical and further education (TAFE) system, which was once the envy of the world, through a reversal of privatisation, a significant increase in federal and state investment, and the removal of cost as a barrier to participation. Publicly provided TAFE should have strong links to key industry sectors, focusing on areas of skills shortages and providing secure pathways to employment. With government as employer, provider and regulator, we can ensure the Australian TAFE system once again delivers high-quality skills and training for workers throughout their lives.
In the face of economic collapse, the government’s refusal to support universities endangers our recovery. Increased public funding for higher education with the highest standards of research and teaching, and a shift away from casual contracts to secure jobs for tertiary educators, are essential for repositioning Australia in the global, post-carbon economy.
6. Dealing with the super-crisis of climate change
After the 2019-20 summer of devastating drought and bushfires, Australians have a new understanding of our vulnerability to climate change. The federal government must embrace the goal of net zero emissions by, at the latest, 2050, as all state and territory governments have. The National Cabinet model established for our response to COVID-19, involving state premiers and the federal government working together, should be used to build consensus to tackle climate change.
Instead of the Coalition’s scaremongering on climate action, we must recognise that embracing renewable energy and committing to emissions reduction is an opportunity for economic modernisation and job creation. Key opportunities include investment in public transport projects, intercity fast rail, and electricity transmission network upgrades. We need to get serious about exploiting our natural advantages in mining and renewable energy, and fast-track the development of zero-emissions minerals and metals manufacturing in regional Australia to create thousands of sustainable jobs.
The direct involvement of workers and their unions in those industries and communities at the forefront of climate-change-induced industrial disruption is critical to the design and success of a plan for new, secure jobs in a post-carbon economy. Tangible, believable planning for the creation of well-paid and secure jobs in new industries requires ongoing negotiation and engagement with those most affected.
7. Strengthening our social safety net
As we rebuild a fairer, more sustainable and more inclusive society, we must improve social, health and economic outcomes for the most disadvantaged Australians. Now is the time to invest in public and social housing, address homelessness, and invest in physical and social infrastructure in Indigenous communities. Measures introduced as part of our response to COVID-19, such as free child care and the recent increase to the JobSeeker payment, clearly indicate that there is value in supporting the participation of our lowest-income households in the economy, not just for their benefit but for the strength of the nation. Permanent increases in income support and the provision of free, universal access to early childhood education and care are two areas for immediate action.
8. Active industry policy
Australia must once again embrace the role of industry policy in strengthening and diversifying our industrial base and securing supply chains in an increasingly fragmented global market. This demands that we invest in Australian-provided services and reinvigorate manufacturing, lifting the production of Australian-made goods. Given the greater impact of COVID-19 on many of our trading partners, the international economy is likely to recover much more slowly than our domestic economy. Key domestic industries such as manufacturing, tourism, education, health and aged care, hospitality, construction and education have diverse challenges. We need industry policy and detailed sector-by-sector roadmaps and industry plans to realise the opportunities before us.
The crisis has highlighted vulnerabilities in our healthcare workforce, medical equipment and manufacturing supply chains. Government can support local jobs and industry policy through procurement policies that explicitly encourage local suppliers, manufacturers and service providers. Any trade deals Australia commits to must support, not undermine, secure, well-paid, sustainable local jobs.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is proud of the way in which unions and workers have been at the forefront of Australia’s response to the pandemic, but much of the hard work lies ahead. Politicians are fond of saying ‘We’re all in this together’, but the reality is, for far too many Australians, our economy is a club of which they will never be members unless there is real change. Now is the time for us to rebuild our communities and our economy and to reconstruct our society in a way that works for all Australians, not just a few.