The country’s top two union leaders, Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus and president Michelle O'Neil, announced last week they’re stepping down from their roles by the end of the year.

After nearly a decade of representing around 1.6 million workers, McManus will finish at the end of this month.

Joining us on the podcast, McManus said her successor hasn’t been announced yet, but hopes they’ll be in place within the next few weeks.

McManus nominated falling real wages and cost-of-living pressures were the biggest immediate challenges for her successor. But the economy-wide threat to jobs from artificial intelligence (AI) was another key area to watch, which could see unions push for stronger federal government intervention.

What we will be wanting to do is ensure that the workplace rights that we do have are fit for purpose […] And if they’re not, well, then there’ll be an expectation from unions and I think the community in general that any government will act to protect Australians and Australian workers.

What we will be wanting to do is ensure that the workplace rights that we do have are fit for purpose […] And if they’re not, well, then there’ll be an expectation from unions and I think the community in general that any government will act to protect Australians and Australian workers.

Does that mean unions will demand tougher rules from the federal government to protect jobs against AI job cuts?

McManus pointed to the existing obligation on all employers to consult when technological change is being rolled out, before people are sacked. But if AI ends up affecting the whole economy, she flagged unions will demand stronger protections, retraining and more:

At the moment we’re seeing [redundancies] happen in tech companies […] It doesn’t appear to be yet to be going beyond that. However, if it does, and there’s a very big possibility that it could, what will be needed will be way more than ‘we’ll consult and then you lose your job’, because people won’t be able to adjust. They won’t able to find jobs elsewhere, because those jobs won’t exist because AI has got rid of them too. In which case, there will be an expectation on the government and from everyone not to sit back and just let that happen […] At that point, if that happened, we’d be demanding shorter working hours for no loss of pay as a means of........

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