Australians continue to debate the Fair Work Commission’s recent decision to reduce Sunday and holiday penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers. This report investigates the prevalence of weekend work in other sectors of Australia’s economy - and confirms the overall economic importance of extra income generated by weekend penalty rates, not just in retail...

Government and business leaders have proposed a range of possible “transition” mechanisms to ease the economic hardship, and defuse political anger, following the Fair Work Commission’s decision to cut penalty rates for work on Sundays and public holidays in the retail and hospitality industries. This briefing note critically reviews several of these proposals.

Following on from the McKell Institute’s report on the economic impact of penalty rate cuts in Australia’s retail and hospitality industries, this report looks at the economic and health impacts of cutting penalty rates for nurses, midwives and aged care workers. This report highlights the importance of penalty rates to the health of patients, the...

This paper outlines the history of penalty rates in Australia and gives a snapshot of the contemporary debate on the topic. Then, focusing on the retail and hospitality sectors, it looks at proposals aimed at reducing or removing penalty rates all together. As an important addition to the public debate on the subject, it examines...

The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) survey measures how work intersects with other life activities, as seen by a randomly selected representative group of 2,690 working Australians.