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May Day

Summary:
Yesterday was May Day, celebrated as the Labour Day public holiday here in Queensland*. And this week, appropriately enough I’m giving two presentations on the case for a four-day working week, one to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, a business-oriented thinktank, and one to a parliamentary inquiry. I started writing a post about the prospect of a radical change in the relationship between workers and managers in the information economy, arising from the combination of near full-employment and the shift to remote work for large groups of workers. But I ran out of time, so for now, I will just toss up some points I want to discuss Will full employment be sustained, or will central banks succeed in recreating the reserve army of labor ? How real is the

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Yesterday was May Day, celebrated as the Labour Day public holiday here in Queensland*. And this week, appropriately enough I’m giving two presentations on the case for a four-day working week, one to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, a business-oriented thinktank, and one to a parliamentary inquiry.

I started writing a post about the prospect of a radical change in the relationship between workers and managers in the information economy, arising from the combination of near full-employment and the shift to remote work for large groups of workers. But I ran out of time, so for now, I will just toss up some points I want to discuss

  • Will full employment be sustained, or will central banks succeed in recreating the reserve army of labor ?
  • How real is the threat of employer spyware extending surveillance into home workplaces ?
  • How should we conceptualise the relationship between workers, managers and owners of capital ?
  • What are the implications for unions?

I’ll throw it open for comments, and think some more about all this

  • At least until the LNP get back in, which I hope is a long time off
John Quiggin
He is an Australian economist, a Professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a former member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government.

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