The trade union movement has suffered a devastating loss, with the passing yesterday of Helen Kelly, the former President of New Zealand’s Council of Trade Unions.

Last week’s ABS employment data raised the usual discussion about unemployment trends across the country. But one key are overlooked by many is perhaps the most worrying part of the release: underemployment is becoming the norm.

By Ged Kearney, ACTU President

Malcolm Turnbull’s recent description of budget management as a ‘moral challenge’ suggests that he is aware of the complex, real world stakes at play. But when you look at the solutions he’s proposed, such as the Budget Savings Omnibus Bill, it appears the Prime Minister believes it’s the act of creating savings that is itself moral, rather than the effect that the savings are bound to have.

By Ged Kearney, President of the ACTU

Today is Equal Pay Day. Technically it is the day on which average earnings for women ‘catch up’ to what men made in the last financial year.

Equal pay day falls on this day because it has taken an additional 70 days for women to earn enough to make the gap in pay they receive on average compared to men.

The long awaited return of Parliament is tomorrow, and there are plenty of interesting storylines to look out for as the 45th Parliament begins. 

The 2016 Census was a slow motion train crash.

In the weeks leading up to what’s previously been a mundanely uncontroversial exercise, community goodwill was tested by concerns about how the Census would be conducted, privacy and digital security.

The Government and ABS seemed unprepared to deal with these concerns and struggled to contain them. 

One of the defining concepts that underpins much of Malcolm Turnbull's economic ideas - and pretty much every conservative government going back to Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s - is the belief in "trickle down". It's the miss-placed idea that by giving tax breaks and other hand outs to big business and high-wealth individuals, their over-flowing economic success will trickle-down to provide benefits for the rest of us. But this week, we got yet more evidence that it simply doesn't work - this time from the Chifley Research Centre.

The Wave Hill Walk Off was one of the key events of modern Australian history. It came at a tumultuous time for Indigenous rights in the 1960's, and helped bring the issue to the attention of main stream Australia. But it was also an important time for the history of the trade union movement. ACTU Indigenous Officer Kara Keys recounts the role of unions in the Walk Off, in this extract from her speech to the ACTU Executive in Darwin on Tuesday 16 August 2016: