![Nicholas Bloom, Professor of Economics at Stanford University.](/web/20170330032906im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/8/w/p/9/image.related.landscape.460x307.gv8u21.png/1490826886449.jpg)
'It's scary' - why rungs are disappearing on the wage ladder
There is more to income inequality than the famed 1 per cent versus the 99 per cent or standing chief executive officers next to average workers.
Anna Patty is Workplace Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald. She is a former Education Editor, State Political Reporter and Health Reporter. Her reports on inequity in schools funding led to the Gonski reforms and won her national awards. Her coverage of health exposed unnecessary patient deaths at Campbelltown Hospital and led to judicial and parliamentary inquiries. At The Times of London, she exposed flaws in international medical trials.
There is more to income inequality than the famed 1 per cent versus the 99 per cent or standing chief executive officers next to average workers.
Government says increasing the minimum wage is "not an efficient way to address relative living standards or the needs of the low-paid".
Consumers are increasingly seeking value for money and expecting lawyers to be competent users of technology.
Retailers are asking for the minimum wage to be increased by less than the inflation rate a month after winning a reduction in Sunday penalty rates.
Almost one in five young people have fewer hours of work than they want, with underemployment in the youth labour force at its highest level in 40 years.
For eight years, the Zammit twins arrived at work an hour early so they could be home in time to pick their children up from school – freeing their working wives to get them off to school.
A new union of hairdressers is gearing up to fight a threatened clip to their weekend penalty rates, with Newcastle hairdresser Melanie Coombs saying they already get "paid peanuts".
The employment safety net needs a wide-ranging overhaul and minimum rates of pay should be cut in order to help solve youth unemployment, says former Fair Work Commission vice-president Graeme Watson.
The federal ALP, Greens and independent senator Jacqui Lambie will introduce a bill on Tuesday to invalidate the Fair Work Commission's decision to reduce Sunday penalty rates.
Aviation workers are sleeping on makeshift beds amid squalid conditions in the bowels of Sydney International Airport while they wait for their next shift.
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