THE Senate’s Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers has extended the deadline for submissions to its ‘inquiry to the impact of technological and other change on the future of work and workers in Australia’, until February 20.
This extension provides AREEA members with an additional two weeks to provide input, comment and feedback into AREEA’s submission, which focuses broadly on the following two areas:
- The development of high technologies, which is creating a large-scale demographic shift in the skills and expertise required in the resources and energy industry. For example, remote operating centres (ROCs) are increasingly centralising operational and technical expertise in CBD hubs, with direct connectivity to remote mine sites where fewer personnel remain on site. Further, automation and advanced robotics are increasingly removing humans from the front line in the resources extraction process.
- Increasing desires for flexible work of new generations of Australians which is similarly shaping the future of work. The resources and energy industry is not immune to broad generational and societal trends towards more dynamic and fluid ways to engage in employment. This includes contracting, working across multiple employers, job sharing and ideas-based collaboration across the internet.
AREEA will also submit to the committee that while technology trends and desires of new generations are aligning to provide valuable employment opportunities to broader demographics of Australians, businesses and workers are being let down by Australia’s workplace relations system.
Simply, Australia’s workplace system is overregulated, over-complex and better suited to the technologies, working patterns and societal demands of the 1970s than 2018 and beyond.
To provide your input into AREEA’s submission on the ‘Future of Work and Workers’, contact [email protected]
