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The ACTU has released a discussion paper coining the term “income recession” to describe the double impact of wage stagnation and cost of living increases: “The vast wealth generated over the last three decades has decisively gone into the hands of a privileged few. Profits, executive salaries and bonuses have soared, while average real wage growth has remained anaemic.” The report draws on the work of ANU’s Ben Phillips to suggest that living standards have suffered their largest fall in 30 years, before suggesting a suite of policies to address the problem.

According to Tim Colebatch, applying the Victorian election results to federal electorates would see the Coalition all but wiped out. Of course, those numbers can’t be directly transferred to the national contest, but this observation can’t be denied: “The most surprising thing about the landslide in Victoria last November is how little difference it has made to the Morrison government’s policies and style. … For Morrison and his ministers, it’s been business as usual, despite an election in which Victorian voters made it clear they don’t like the way the Coalition is doing business.” Elsewhere, Sean Kelly wonders whether the Coalition has fallen for its own spin, missing a fundamental shift in the electorate’s priorities: “Our country is waking up to the fact that, over a very long period, many people have lost, so that others can get ahead. Bank profits, the protection of the church’s reputation, money made by polluting industries, the extraction of valuable minerals from land inhabited by Indigenous people, the incredible wealth enjoyed by some individuals — these successes have come at great cost, to a great many people. Those people know what is important, and are tired of being asked to look away.”

The Heart Foundation is campaigning to address gender discrimination in the health system: “The discrimination against women who have heart disease starts with the fact that women are 12 per cent less likely to be screened for heart disease and are less likely to be prescribed blood pressure medication than men. It continues with the startling revelation that only 15 per cent of cardiologists in Australia are women when international research shows women fare better when treated by a health practitioner of the same gender.” Among the barrage of statistics, the most shocking is that the death rate of women who suffer heart attacks is higher than that of men.

The ABC’s Margaret Burin has revealed the exploitation of warehouse workers at Amazon’s new fulfilment centre in Melbourne: “the workplace is built around a culture of fear where their performance is timed to the second; … high-pressure targets make them feel like they can’t go to the toilet and sometimes push them to cut safety corners; they can be sent home early without being paid for the rest of their shift when orders are completed; and everyone is employed as a casual and constantly anxious about whether they’ll get another shift.” The NUW says the problem is that bargaining doesn’t occur where the power is, thanks to outsourcing: “There’s no point bargaining with [labour hire company] Adecco, they have no power because they don’t set the rates of pay out there. We can’t bargain with Amazon because, technically, they don’t have any employees [within scope], so the workers are locked into low-quality low-pay work.” An Amazon worker who spoke anonymously to the ABC cuts to the nub of it: “Jeff Bezos has got the most money of any person on Earth. He’s not earning that money. That’s the money we’re making for him.” It’s time to change the rules so that workers can bargain with their real boss.