Australian Unions Push for More Paid Leave

0:00This is Adelaide News today, every story, every city, every day. Australian unions are pushing hard for more paid annual leave. On Wednesday, the Australian Council of Trade unions launched a campaign to give full-time workers five weeks off each year, up from the current four. Weeks. Shift workers would get six weeks instead of five. This comes as workers deal with heavy unpaid overtime. Recent research shows Australians put in about four and a half weeks of extra unpaid hours annually. Unions argue the extra leave would help reclaim some of that time for rest and family. Business groups fire back quickly. Leaders call the idea out of touch, amid a productivity slump and rising inflation. They worry about added costs in admin burdens for companies. Annual leave has not budged since the mid-1970s when it hit four weeks. It started much smaller in the 1930s and grew slowly. Now a government inquiry is looking at whether minimum work standards,

1:01including reasonable hours, need an update. Even with more leave, overworked culture might persist. Workers could just cram the same tasks into fewer weeks and many already struggle to use their current time off. Employers are urged to manage workloads better to make breaks possible. Dean and his brought to you by our sponsor. If earbuds fall out when you sleep, this is for you. A pillow with built-in sound, S-O-L-L-I, solelypillow.com