Josh Frydenberg Won’t Address Wage Growth So Here’s Some Suggestions From People Who Will
The Coalition stands firm on its belief that wages are not its responsibility.
The Federal Government has only offered temporary cost of living relief measures as part of the 2022/23 Budget — despite calls for permanent solutions like raising the minimum wage — hedging its bets on wage growth that there is no actual plan for executing.
As part of the Federal Budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg predicted that wage growth is forecast to increase from 2 3/4 percent in 2021-22 to 3 1/4 percent in 2022/23. This figure has already been labelled “optimistic” by the Business Council of Australia, but the real issue is that there’s no actual plan outlined as to how the government expects wages to increase.
Instead, the same mentality of ‘trust us’ is being pushed, as if we haven’t heard the same message about wage growth being just around the corner for years now.
The Government Has Wiped Its Hands Clean Of Any Responsibility To Increase Wages
Frydenberg has repeatedly reiterated the government’s stance on not taking a side on decisions made by FairWork, asserting that he will not “take lectures from the unions or the Labor party on wages”, according to The Guardian.
Essentially, the Treasurer has wiped his hands clean of any personal responsibility to fix the wage crisis in Australia — despite telling ABC’s Patricia Karvelas just last week that he “obviously wants to see wages rise”.
But the Budget has now been delivered and Australians are still effectively $800 worse off — on average — than they were in 2020 as a result of wages not rising enough to combat inflation. So what needs to be done, and whose job is it to actually do it?
The Australian Council Of Trade Unions Says We Need Five Percent
The Australian Council of Trade Unions has called for a $2,000 per year pay rise for the country’s lowest-paid workers.
In a submission to FairWork’s minimum wage review, the ACTU called for the minimum wage to be increased from $20.33 per hour to $21.35 per hour — which would see 2.67 million employees cop a pay rise that would make a substantial difference to individuals.
According to ACTU Secretary Sally McManus, this is “what is needed for Australian workers to keep their heads above water, with inflation and the cost of living rapidly rising”.
“The Morrison government has projected real wage cuts this year, following on from the $800 cut last year,” she told The Guardian. “This can be avoided if they support this wage claim.”
The Greens Say Low Wages Are A Deliberate Part Of The Budget
While it’s no secret that wage growth has been a bit of an empty promise from the Coalition in every Budget since they’ve come to power, the Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt went so far as to allege this is a strategic decision.
“The budget is based on a real wages cut this year,” he told Junkee. “Keeping wages low is the deliberate design feature of this budget. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
As for how to actually tackle the problem, Bandt stressed that “the key to really tackling the cost of living is lifting wages”.
“We want to lift the minimum wage to sixty percent of the adult wage, which will help lift people out of poverty as well,” said Bandt. “All of those things are affordable if we stop giving tax cuts to billionaires and funding coal and gas corporations.”
Bandt warned that people shouldn’t necessarily trust the government’s wage growth predictions, as they’ve been wrong before. “The government has never been right before about how fast wages are going to grow, so there’s no reason to believe they’ll be right this time. They always make heroic predictions about wages skyrocketing and they never do,” said Bandt.
According to Bandt, an immediate move to outlaw insecure work and lift the minimum wage would be a significant win for employees and would help the cost of living situation in the short and long term.
“Casual and insecure work keeps wages low and until we outlaw insecure work and restrict the exploitation of casuals, then wages are going to stay low because at the moment, it’s the employer who has all the bargaining chips,” he said. “The government could also start by lifting the minimum wage floor. If you lift the minimum wage floor to 60 percent of the adult weekly wage, then it would start lifting wages from the bottom up. They should be starting by lifting the minimum wage up.
“If we started paying public servants more, which the government holds the purse strings for, then that would lift wages across the board.”
Lavender Baj is Junkee’s senior reporter, focusing on news, politics, and finance. Follow her on Twitter.