Employers will have more room to breathe following the federal government’s decision to ease rules on keeping extensive records of hours worked by senior executives and managers. In making this change, essentially high-income employees will be excluded from what is supposed to be a universal set of minimum labour standards. This comes as the Australian Mines and Metals Association warned this week that the regulations would require employers to keep records on the start and finish times, number of hours worked and variations to normal hours of every employee.