This report illustrates how the Morrison Government's omnibus industrial relations bill will lead to a significant increase in employer-designed enterprise agreements (EA) that reduce workers' pay and conditions, rather than improve them—signalling a return to the WorkChoices pattern of EA-making and putting further downward pressure on Australia's already record-low wages growth.

The results in this research suggest that wage growth inequality between employees is relatively independent of where the economy is in the business cycle, and that the differences between employees are more substantial than the year-to-year variation.

A wage freeze is often described as a "temporary sacrifice," that supposedly ends once normal annual wage increments are restored. However, this paper confirms that the legacy of even a temporary pay freeze is a permanent reduction in lifetime incomes and superannuation, which can easily ultimately result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost...

For the last generation, macroeconomic policy in Australia has been based on the assumption that unemployment must be maintained at a certain minimum level in order to restrain wages and prevent an outbreak of accelerating inflation. Now, after six years of record-low wage growth, this paper argues that it's time for that policy to be...

This paper compiles the various proposals advanced by employers, and shows that together, they would constitute a thorough reorientation of Australia's collective bargaining system.