Culture

Au Pairs And Underpaid Maccas Workers Sum Up A Pretty Car Crash Week For The Left

It's not Dutton-esque, but it hasn't been great either.

by Claire Connelly  20 May 2016

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It hasn’t been a good week for Labor and The Greens. The sincerity of Labor’s real concern for Industrial Relations was called into question after it was revealed that its largest union affiliate, Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), had struck a deal with McDonald’s to underpay Australian workers tens of millions of dollars a year. Nothing fuels the “unions are dead” argument quite like the SDA settling with a fast-food giant for less pay and poorer working conditions.

Labor likes to throw around idle threats about weekend loading, overtime and what an increase to GST will do to working families, but the revelations they got trampled all over by a huge corporation is symbolic. Namely, that there is less job stability to be found on the left side of Australian politics and if Labor’s largest union affiliate can’t make it happen, what hope is there for the rest of us? If it can’t even fight for a fair wages for Maccas workers, it doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that it can come up with a better policy than that of “jobs and growth” being offered by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The revelation was enough to diminish what little political capital was built up by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten yesterday. Shorten landed himself in the mother of all photo opportunities, clearing his campaign trail schedule to care for motorists injured in a head-on collision as they were trying to overtake him.


But Labor and the SDA get runner-up in the award for most unfortunate use of symbolism. Newly appointed Greens leader Richard Di Natale takes home this week’s prize after his 2012 ad for for a live-in au pair whom he proposed would earn $3.75 an hour was uncovered by The SMH. (Minimum wage at the time was $16 per hour.) Di Natale had advertised for an au pair – essentially a nanny whose rates are offset by meals and board – on backpackerjobboard.com for $150 a week.

According to the ad – which was screenshotted before being scrubbed – the au pair was required to cook meals and entertain Di Natale’s children while he was out on the campaign trail.

“We have 50 acres of land, cows, ducks, chickens and a dog,” the ad read. “We also have an orchard and olive garden. We live a sustainable lifestyle with water-tanks and solar power. Dad [Di Natale] works away a lot during the week so I am looking for an extra pair of hands around the place to entertain the lads [their sons] and help with cooking and general domestic duties. We have self-contained accommodation, kitchen, TV & stereo…Will take couples but the weekly wage remains the same.” 

The Greens leader has since hit back, describing the story as a “disappointing beat up” in a post on his Facebook wall. He said the package was closer to $20 an hour (about $3 above minimum wage) once board and other expenses were taken into account. “We went to a specialist employment agency to get some advice on pay rates and based on that advice we offered a package of close to $500 for 25 hours a week including rent, meals and sundries,” he said.

However, for a party allegedly concerned about protecting the rights of workers – Di Natale has taken Shorten to task on penalty rates and has made workers’ rights a focus of the Greens’ election campaign – this appeared to be a pretty uncomfortable faux pas.

The Liberals may be correctly accused of siding with cut-throat corporate end of town but I’ll give them this: at least it knows how to negotiate. (In the case of our  Prime Minister, it could be argued he’s too successful at it, which is why the party has been good at keeping so many Abbott era policies alive.)

But back to Labor and The Greens: have they strayed so far from their respective bases that they’ve become almost unrecognisable?

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Feature image via McDonald’s Facebook/Maitland Mecury

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Claire Connelly is an award-winning freelance writer, journalist and consultant. She writes for The Australian Financial Review, SBS, The Australian, The Age, specialising in finance, technology, economics and policy. She tweets here.