Union leaders including the ACTU boss, Sally McManus, called for a new levy on business to pay for training for those workers who want to up skill for their jobs. The proposal would impose a 1.5% levy on businesses with a turnover of $500,000 or above.<\/p>\n
Employers hate the idea.<\/p>\n
The Business Council of Australia boss, Bran Black, said such new levies would be a backward step. He said the government should pay for incentives for trainee workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a business perspective, we just don\u2019t see that taxing the business community is the right way to deliver the outcomes that Australia needs,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n
The Australian Industry Group boss, Innes Willox, said the plan would hit more than 70,000 Australian businesses and raise about $4.5bn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done a training levy before in Australia, between 1990 and 1996. It didn\u2019t work, it distorted the market,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Productivity Commission said it was distortionary and it also adds to compliance costs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The prime minister told attendees their work would feed in to next year\u2019s federal budget, as well as the mid-year economic update, expected just before Christmas.<\/p>\n
Despite dampening expectations of major reforms in areas like tax, Albanese said longer term reform proposals and priorities were possible.<\/p>\n
He nominated AI as one area requiring a longer period of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t expect that you will solve all of those issues in the next three days, but what you will have is ideas and input that will shape that agenda and \u2026 public discourse.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
There could be an agreement to better recognise the skills and qualifications of those who have trained overseas.<\/p>\n
AIG\u2019s Willox said \u201cmillions of people\u201d were in Australia doing jobs that were way below their skill level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s recognition that the system is jammed up. [There are] people who have qualifications that are not recognised, be that migrants or be that people trying to transfer between states or even \u2026 between occupations,\u201d Willox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really important we do get some quick wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liam O\u2019Brien, an assistant secretary at the ACTU, agreed that recognition of prior learning and the transfer of credit for previous qualifications was a \u201cpriority\u201d.<\/p>\n
But hopes for a quick win look likely to be disappointed, after O\u2019Brien said \u201cthe devil is in the detail\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is a very tricky one for us to resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Jennifer Westacott, a former BCA boss and the chancellor of Western Sydney University, called for the benefits of productivity gains to be shared with workers.<\/p>\n
Speaking after taking part in a session on skills, development and mobility, she said business leaders wanted to reward workers who were doing a good job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about creating more value from what we do,\u201d she told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be a sense in which people feel that they\u2019re getting the benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way of sharing things is high wages and we can\u2019t get started if we are not growing at a rate that allows us to expand the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Westacott said households had weathered the cost-of-living crisis sparked by post-pandemic inflation but the next challenge was standards of living.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the last decade, we\u2019ve seen the lowest rate of GDP per capita in the last six decades. That\u2019s a red line.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
AI was a major topic of conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that was really positive, where there was a lot of agreement, was the sense that we do need to help the Australian community skill-up in terms of its confidence in using AI,\u201d Allegra Spender, the independent MP, said.<\/p>\n
The commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia, Barney Glover, recently described AI as a \u201cfoundational skill\u201d that needed to be taught in schools.<\/p>\n
The JSA in a major report found that clerical roles were among a number of white collar occupations threatened by AI, but that the technology was more likely to augment jobs, rather than replace them.<\/p>\n
The transformative technology is sure to also loom large on day two of the roundtable, which will focus on productivity.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Unions want business to pay for worker training Union leaders including the ACTU boss, Sally McManus, called…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,79,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-158083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115054813190488388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}