Labour

Australia's growing reliance on temporary migrant labour has fuelled a booming labour hire industry, with contractors sitting between growers and workers, often recruiting, transporting and housing them.

While some operate legally, others prey on vulnerable migrant workers, paying them cash, well below the minimum wage.

[…]

The Modern Slavery Act, introduced in 2018, requires companies with annual revenue above $100 million to file a report each year, identifying the modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains and what they're doing to address them.

It was designed to encourage transparency and improve corporate behaviour.

Four Corners used data analysis tools to analyse hundreds of annual modern slavery statements from 50 food companies between 2020 and 2025.

One in four contained sections that were more than 80 per cent identical to previous reports.

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Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels has dedicated a lot of time to the plight of migrant workers. […]

He describes the Modern Slavery Act as a symbolic and tokenistic law. "It's the sort of law you pass when you want to look as if you're concerned about something, but you don't intend anything to happen," he says.

An independent review of the Modern Slavery Act handed to the federal government in 2023 concluded Australia's framework should be strengthened.

"The report spells out what's obvious to regulators like me — that the law was never intended to be associated with any real action. It was just a law you put on the books as a sign of concern, but with no intent to take serious action," he says.

In short, although policies to improve broadband access are important, policies that help ensure the availability of low-cost devices are also essential.

But advocates of digital equity are not the only constituent groups concerned with the supply and accessibility of computing devices. Environmental and labor rights activists advocate for policies that extend the lifecycle of existing devices, which can help to minimize e-waste and protect the viability of the repair and refurbishing labor markets, respectively. Making computer repair cheaper and bolstering secondhand and refurbishing markets better ensures that low-income consumers can afford to maintain the devices they already own and that they can purchase devices as needed (Fosdick, 2012; Islam et al., 2021). Extending the life of a device through repair is often a more affordable choice than purchasing a brand-new device (Svensson-Hoglund et al., 2021). Furthermore, optimizing the lifecycle of existing devices helps exert market pressures on manufacturer's pricing of new devices, helping to keep down the cost of brand new devices (Islam et al., 2021; Leclerc & Badami, 2020). Thus, policies championed to reduce e-waste and protect the right-to-repair (R2R) can also enhance digital equity.

Policies that have mutually beneficial outcomes for different sectors have been described as multisolving innovations (Dearing & Lapinski, 2020). Multisolving innovations can broaden the coalition of activists in support of a given policy issue and can be strategically framed to appeal to constituent bases that might otherwise be disinterested or even antagonistic (e.g., framing environmental policies around health outcomes to appeal to conservatives) to an issue.

A council under fire from the Government for piloting a four-day working week on full pay has reported improvements in staff performance and wellbeing.

Liberal Democrat-run South Cambridgeshire District Council, which is looking to continue a planned extension of the pilot until March despite Government officials ordering it to end, found rates of staff turnover and vacancies had dropped.

A report on progress since the start of the trial in January presented to the council’s employment and staffing committee on Thursday showed the number of agency staff covering vacancies had reduced from 23 to nine, providing a projected saving of £776,000.

Staff turnover reduced by 36% and sickness rates fell by 33%, while significant improvements were reported in the mental and physical health of employees.

Complaints to the council reduced by 2.5% and there was no worsening in the performance of any council service, the report said.

We looked for the origins of clippings from 14 articles that were published between 1894 and 2022, most of which we found in newspaper archives.

A meme shows clippings of 14 real articles that were printed between 1894 and 2022, all of which show people expressing variations of, "Nobody wants to work anymore."

On Monday, Hearst — whose magazine titles include Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Town & Country — sent staffers an email announcing the new restrictions, which were detailed in an internal document that employees were encouraged to sign.

“We should be careful to consider the impact that a controversial statement on a hot-button issue may have on Hearst’s reputation,” the policy reads, according to a copy of the text of the document shared with The Washington Post.

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While violations could result in “termination,” according to the document, the policy doesn’t include examples of what qualifies as rule-breaking material. However, it does warn that posts about even seemingly “apolitical” or local topics could be contentious enough to be a problem.

“Many social movements are politically charged, and apolitical events and movements can quickly become controversial and political,” the policy reads. “Even local community organizations can become politicized.”