A selection of recent Eye catching news stories during June 2009:

Laws reviewed for equal opportunity
A decline in women in leadership roles and the pay gap between male and female full time earnings has prompted the Rudd Government to review its law on equal opportunity. Ms Plibersek, Minister for the Status of Women said the pay gap between male and female full time earnings was now 17.2 per cent and many parents were struggling to balance their work and family responsibilities. She said the legislation needs to keep pace with economic, social and legislative changes that have occurred since the last inquiry in 1998. Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, said while women have more than equal educational outcomes compared to men, the vast majority of Australians living on low incomes and social security were women.
As reported in The Australian 2 June 2009

IT student enrolments have soared
After a slight rise in enrolments 12 months ago, some universities are reporting a jump in domestic undergraduate IT student numbers of about 15 percent. Most are predicting the upswing will continue into next year. The enrolment rises come after a period of drastic decline in demand for IT courses that followed the dotcom crash. Many students were now looking for an interdisciplinary experience with IT being a strong component.
As reported in The Australian IT 2 June 2009

Ensuring people are everyone’s business
The human resources role is being tested more than ever as executives find themselves increasingly focused on the bottom line. If costs control was a mantra in the good times, it’s now a law engraved in stone. But when the cuts involve people, the pressure and emotions are high. Most of the panelists agree that despite the slowdown, there is an underlying concern about talent shortages in Australia which requires a balancing act between short and long term pressures. Our panelists all agree that involving senior executives in communicating the rationale for staff cuts and other HR issues is critical in these morale-sapping times.
As reported in The Australian Financial Review 2 June 2009

Reduce labour hire says ACTU congress
The ACTU has reaffirmed its commitment to cutting down the use of casual and on-hired labour in Australia. The ACTU said it would continue to lobby to cut down the overall incidence of on-hired and casual labour, and for better conditions for existing on-hired and casual workers. The union peak body said it also wanted employment entitlements extended to casual workers, and to ensure casuals had a right to convert to permanent status after a set period of time. The government should create a “training guarantee”, the ACTU added, which entitled all workers including casuals and labour hire staff to training if they were retrenched or likely to be retrenched.
As reported in ShortList 3 June 2009

Expat employers and workers double tax blow
Tax changes unveiled in the federal budget last month will increase costs for domestic companies employing Australians overseas and also dip into the pockets of expatriate workers, tax practitioners have warned. The plan to limit the scope of the income tax exemption for Australians working overseas will “impose additional costs on Australian companies employing Australian residents overseas and therefore reduces their competitiveness”, the Taxation Institute of Australia said. Under the current rules, foreign income earned by Australian expats for a continuous period of 91 days or more is generally exempt from income tax. Only government employees such as defence personnel and aid and charity workers working abroad will continue to be eligible for exemption under the changes. Employees who become residents of foreign jurisdiction which can generally occur after about two years, would also be exempt. Most other workers, particularly those on short term contracts and seconded offshore, will have tax withheld by the jurisdiction they work in and also have to ensure PAYG installments are paid.
As reported by the Australian Financial Review 3 June 2009

Training of next generation as baby boomers retire
The impending retirement of Australia’s baby boomer generation is causing increasing concern among senior decision makers in both the public and private sectors. There are growing fears that the issue of Australia’s ageing population will compound the downturn and constrain recovery. What this means is that Australia could lose a large number of senior, experienced workers between now and 2015 with some estimates putting 55-57 per cent of workers in organizations becoming eligible for retirement. For the ICT sector, the impending loss of mature age professionals threatens to exacerbate the deficiencies in certain high demand skills, as well as creating a critical shortage of experienced leaders to drive the next stage of growth. Moreover the Government’s plans to invest in a wide range of major infrastructure projects will require a substantial influx of skilled workers.
As reported by the Australian IT 2 June 2009

Girls “hampered by failure fears”
Girls have a greater fear of failure than boys despite outperforming them at all stages of school, a report said. It also suggested girls often aim for careers reinforcing gender stereotypes, such as teaching, childcare and beauty. Some 94% of the 1,000 English teenagers surveyed for the report said they needed better careers advice. The Commission’s report suggested a fifth of young people had not received one to one careers advice, and did not understand how to achieve their desired goal. It said despite girls’ success at GCSE, three quarters of women still ended up in the “five Cs” of employment - cleaning, catering, caring, cashiering and clerical. Some 46% of white working class girls feared educational failure, compared with about a quarter of white middle class boys. White working class boys and white middle class girls were equally fearful of failure on 38%.
As reported by BBC News UK 9 June 2009

Job Ads down 0.2%
The ANZ Job Ad Series showed the total number of jobs advertised in major metropolitan newspapers and on the internet fell by 0.2% in May to a weekly average of 136,457. The total number of advertisements in May was 49.1% lower than 12 months ago. Warren Hogan, ANZ head of Australian economics, said ANZ expected further falls in employment for the rest of this year, and forecast a 29,000 reduction in jobs in the May labour force figures to be released later this week. ANZ expects unemployment to reach 6% in 2009 before eventually peaking at more than 8% in 2010. Hogan said the stabilization in job advertising in recent months was a positive sign for the economy but there was still no evidence of a recovery in job ad numbers.
As reported by ShortList 9 June 2009

Online job ads down 4.23%
The Olivier Job Index, which was also released today, fell 4.32% in May and is now 51.90% lower than it was 12 months ago. Worst hit during the month were engineering (down 8.4%), HR (-6.7%) and trades and services, which fell 5.5%. Whilst full time job ads continued to fall, there was one positive sign with part time job ads up 5.3% and temporary and contract positions up 5.9%.
As reported by ShortList 9 June 2009

State budgets mandate big cuts
The technology industry’s hopes of a big boost in government expenditure on computer systems in NSW and QLD have been demolished after budgets in both states delivered measures aimed at extracting substantial efficiencies from suppliers. The NSW government yesterday outlined a sweeping review of technology expenditure across all agencies as a key mechanism to extract savings of more than $2 billion over four years, while QLD has indicated it will pursue centralized purchasing arrangements to cut costs. The synchronous moves by two of Australia’s biggest information technology buyers to reduce their spending follow similar measures by the federal government, which has mandated big cuts to its computing costs aimed at saving more than $1 billion under the Gershon review.
As reported by The Australian Financial Review 17 June 2009

When staff jump ship client lists are a hot issue
More firms are taking former staff to court to stop them profiting from their inside knowledge. Recessionary times have made holding on to clients the hot button issue for firms across town and a rising number of disputes between employers and their former employees are playing out as restraint of trade cases in court. Employment lawyers say employers are fighting harder to forbid former employees from working in particular industries or approaching clients in various regions for months or even years. Lawyers say restraint of trade cases are on the rise nationally.
As reported by the Australian Financial Review 16 June 2009

Jobless rate hits 5.7%
Australia’s economy shed 26,200 full time jobs last month, as companies cut staff to weather the economic downturn. NSW posted the highest jobless rates. The job losses pushed the unemployment rate up to 5.7 percent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported. Economists have tipped the national’s workforce lost 30,000 jobs during the month, sending the jobless rate to 5.7 per cent. In May the economy lost a net 1700 jobs. There were 24,500 part time created in the month, almost offsetting the 26,200 full time positions shed. Data out last week showed the economy expended in the first quarter of 2009, avoiding two straight quarters of contraction and the resulting technical recession. Analysts though have warned that the economy remains weak with the unemployment rate on course to peak near 9 per cent. Among the states, NSW had the highest jobless rate, with the figure jumping to 6.4 percent in May from 6.1 percent in April. A year earlier, about 4.7 percent of the state’s workforce was out of work. Victoria was the next worst, with a jobless rate of 5.9 percent up from 5.7 percent in April and a year ago 4.3 per cent. SA and Tasmania eased to 4.5 percent from 5.5 percent and QLD and WA rose to 5.3 percent from 4.9 percent.
As reported by the SMH 11 June 2009