UPDATED 8am: The final day of the Labour Party Conference gets underway today, with the release of its annual report.

The Party's candidate for the hotly-contested Mt Roskill by-election seat, Michael Wood, will speak, following a plenary debate and policy proposals by members.

Labour's deputy leader Annette King will follow, before leader Andrew Little closes the conference with his address after lunch.

Workers' representatives are backing much of the 'Future of Work' report.

The document, released by the finance spokesperson at the Party's conference yesterday, contains a range of recommended measures on how to better the country's workforce.

Etu Union's Bill Newson said the devil's in the detail - but this is the sort of thing successful economies, like those throughout Scandinavia, currently do.

"We don't have any real kind of knitted together Government led-strategy to create new high-value jobs or to support workers in their transition to those jobs, other than offering them another couple of thousand dollars to shift to Christchurch

Labour's finance spokesman also wants to tax businesses that aren't training up workers, or don't have apprenticeship programmes in place.

Newson said from what it sounds like, it'd be beneficial for both employees and employers.

"The number one retardant on business reported by employers is the lack of skills," he said.

Meanwhile the business sector is less than impressed with Labour's proposed tax on employers, saying it could prevent small businesses from growing.

Business New Zealand chief Kirk Hope said it'll hit companies where it hurts, and employers are struggling to find New Zealand staff, whether skilled or unskilled.

"If you're going to put a tax on the businesses that can't get the skills that they need because they're not training the people that they can't get, then that's really problematic."

Hope said roughly 74,000 young New Zealanders aren't in education, employment or training, but only 13,000 of them are work-ready.

He said the focus should be on ensuring the education sector is set up to fill gaps in skills shortages.

The annual conference was opened on Friday night, and runs until the end of the weekend.