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Hosted by the 鈥檚 Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies, the annual Kingsley Laffer Memorial Lecture was this year delivered by Professor Weil on 15 August.

鈥淲e see the fissuring of work most obviously in lean sectors like retail but it鈥檚 now encroaching on jobs in highly-skilled industries like law and medicine,鈥� Professor Weil explained.

Dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, Professor Weil was Head of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor 2014-2017 under President Barack Obama.

鈥淟ike a fissure in a once solid rock that deepens and spreads, the secondary businesses doing that work is affected, often shifting those activities to other businesses and so on,鈥� said Professor Weil.

What impact does this continuous fissuring of work have on businesses and workers?

While head of the U.S. Department of Labor鈥檚 Wage and Hour Division, Professor Weil was responsible for enforcing laws against wage theft and saw many workers in catering, home care and janitorial work fail to be paid what they had rightly earned.

鈥淲e need to confront the challenges of present workplaces and move regulation away from 鈥榚mployment鈥� and toward 鈥榳ork鈥�,鈥� Professor Weil explained.

Head of the , , welcomed Professor Weil to campus and said: 鈥淚t was an honour to have the Laffer Lecture delivered by someone with such wide-ranging practical and applied experience.

鈥淧rofessor Weil鈥檚 lecture shows the value of connecting research with the real-world experience of work and employment,鈥� said Professor Baird. 聽

The inaugural was delivered in 1992 by the Hon Bob Hawke, former prime minister of Australia.

Kingsley Laffer was the founder of industrial relations at the University of Sydney and a pioneer of teaching and research in Australian industrial relations.

Professor Weil has written five books including , published by Harvard University Press in 2017.