David Marin-Guzman

David Marin-Guzman is a workplace correspondent at The Australian Financial Review, covering industrial relations, workplace policy and leadership with a focus on how power, law and technology shape conditions at work. His reporting is distinguished by close attention to tribunals, unions and enforcement mechanisms, and by sustained investigative work that traces how formal rules intersect with intimidation, corruption and new technology. He combines daily coverage of disputes and reforms with long-running projects that follow the same actors across bargaining tables, courtrooms and political forums.

Industrial relations and union power

Marin-Guzman’s core beat is industrial relations, and he regularly reports on union strategies, employer responses and the evolution of collective bargaining frameworks. He has covered multi-employer bargaining debates, including union pushes to limit business opt-outs in multi-employer deals, detailing how proposed changes would bind more employers into sector-wide agreements and shift the balance of power in negotiations. His work on strikes shows the operational stakes of industrial conflict, such as a two-week strike threatening to shut down a major liquefied natural gas operation, where he follows the impact on production, the unions’ demands and the timeline for resolution.

He also writes on the political dimension of union behaviour, including reports on allegations of “union thuggery” that link workplace disputes to national politics and party leadership. Across these stories he draws on tribunal evidence, internal documents and interviews with union and employer representatives, putting readers close to the mechanics of bargaining rather than just the rhetoric around it. The through-line is a precise mapping of how unions leverage legal tools, public campaigns and industrial action, and how employers and governments respond.

AI, technology and the changing workplace

Marin-Guzman is a prominent voice on how artificial intelligence and digital surveillance are reshaping workplace disputes and regulation. He has reported that a flood of baseless unfair dismissal claims has been generated by AI tools, tracking how claim volumes before the Fair Work Commission surged by more than 70 per cent over three years and how automated drafting tools are driving the spike in cases. In a related piece, he notes that about half of unfair dismissal claims are now written using AI, drawing on tribunal studies presented to a Senate inquiry and explaining how this changes evidentiary standards and workload for decision-makers.

His coverage extends beyond tribunals to the policy response, including reporting on a Labor party branch’s plan to use government procurement rules to ensure AI empowers workers and does not fragment jobs or undermine conditions. He examines proposals to bake worker protections into government contracts, linking union advocacy with the party platform and future legislation. In technology-on-the-ground stories, such as his report on a company that turned workers’ laptops into listening devices, he explores the privacy and trust implications of monitoring tools and the cultural fallout inside organisations. By pairing specific case studies with policy analysis, he positions AI and surveillance not as abstract trends but as concrete drivers of disputes, regulation and leadership challenges.

Construction, CFMEU and organised crime

Marin-Guzman’s investigative work on the construction sector and the CFMEU has been central to his profile, culminating in a Gold Walkley for his role in the “Building Bad” series. As part of that project, he helped uncover construction companies’ dealings with bikies and underworld figures, exposing how organised crime intersected with union power and major projects. His reporting traces specific relationships and episodes of intimidation, showing how these dynamics distort bargaining, safety and governance on building sites.

He continues to follow the CFMEU and the effort to clean up its construction division. In commentary on the need for an inquiry to permanently reform the union, he draws on his earlier investigative findings to argue that piecemeal interventions have not addressed a culture of fear and violence inside the organisation. On The Fin podcast he discusses what has been done to stamp out that culture and the obstacles to lasting change, linking regulatory moves, internal union politics and the role of external administrators. Across these pieces, his distinct contribution is the way he holds the same institution in view over time, moving from exposés of criminal links to scrutiny of whether promised reforms are delivered.

Tribunals, workplace policy and leadership

Many of Marin-Guzman’s stories are anchored in workplace tribunals and formal decision-making bodies, which he uses as lenses on broader policy and leadership questions. In his reporting on AI-generated claims and unfair dismissal cases, he details how rising caseloads strain the Fair Work Commission and force employers and unions to adapt their strategies, including the use of data and precedent in negotiations. He has covered disputes over major enterprise agreements, including revelations that confidential modelling shared with a large employer left workers worse off, highlighting how technical modelling and internal emails shape outcomes for thousands of employees.

He also examines emerging rights and entitlements, such as the case in which unions sought to establish a presumptive right to work from home for around two million office staff under a clerks award. In that story he contrasts the proposal with international practice, noting that such a broad WFH right would have little precedent globally, save for one system in central Africa, and explains employers’ arguments against embedding remote work as a default entitlement. Leadership is a recurring theme: his pieces often show how union officials, business executives and political figures make choices under legal and public pressure, and how those choices flow through to workplaces.

Background and format

Marin-Guzman writes news, analysis, commentary and long-form investigations for The Australian Financial Review, reflecting a broad range of formats on the same workplace beat. He also contributes to The Fin podcast, where he extends his reporting on unions and workplace culture into audio explainers and interviews. Public biographies describe him as a workplace journalist and note his earlier experience as a film critic, indicating a background in narrative and culture that informs his ability to translate complex industrial and legal stories into accessible prose. Across platforms, his work is consistent: he follows the institutions and personalities that govern work, tests their claims against documents and data, and returns to the same disputes as they move from strike ballots to tribunals to political debates.