Jessica Munday

Workers being left behind in good times

TASMANIAN workers know the rules that once made our workplaces fair are broken.

That’s why hundreds from across Tasmania converged on Hobart on April 29, many travelling from the North and North-West, to demand a better deal for working people.

The Tasmanian union movement believes every worker deserves a job they can count on. Having a job you can count on means knowing you’ll have security. It means knowing you can pay your bills this month, next month, and every other month.

For too many Tasmanians, this is becoming harder – 40 per cent of Australians are now in insecure work. This proliferates workplaces in Tasmania in the public and private sector.

Take the University of Tasmania, one of the state’s largest employers with about 7500 people, but with 70 per cent in insecure work.

As Unions Tasmania secretary, I speak to people who do all types of work. Every time I hear a worker tell me they’ve been casual for years, I think to myself “that’s got to be a record”.

Until I meet someone else. Like the security guard who has worked for the same employer for 11 years, full-time hours, all year round, but he is casual. Or the academic who has worked the same job for 20 years but never on anything other than a fixedterm contract. That’s two decades of insecure work.

These aren’t casual jobs. These aren’t Christmas casuals employed to cover a holiday peak. Casualisation, fixedterm contracts, labour hire and sham contracting are the many legal ways employers ensure workers do not have job security from one day or month to the next.

While working people struggle in their search for job security, wage growth is at near record lows in Tasmania as it is across the country.

At a time of soaring company profits, why isn’t the wealth being shared? Workers know why. It’s been years since they believed the lie that trickle-down economics delivers benefits to them.

A contributing factor to Tasmania’s low wage growth is the Liberals’ blind adherence to a 2 per cent cap for wage rises in the state service. With recent ABS data showing cost of health care has increased by 4.2 per cent, housing by 3.3 per cent, transport by 2.9 per cent and education by 2.6 per cent, their pay packets are going backwards.

But it’s not only the pay packets of nearly 28,000 Tasmanians that are being held back. A wage cap serves the dual purpose of sending a signal to the private sector that there is a limit on pay increases and 2 per cent is it.

Many Tasmanian unions have attended a bargaining negotiation with an employer in the private sector citing the Government’s wages policy as a reason for not offering more despite their profits or the workforce’s productivity.

Tasmania desperately needs a pay rise, but our Government is content to tell business not to give workers a decent one.

We are kidding ourselves if we think we can keep talking about how we cope with rising living costs if we do not also talk about the negative effect our lower average wages and sluggish wage growth have on working families.

We must stop the wage and superannuation theft suffered by workers. In recent months, we have seen horrendous examples of exploitation.

A Hobart restaurant had to pay back their employee over $19,000 after it was found they were forced to work for as little as $10.36 an hour. The relevant award minimum was $24.45. There’s multi-tasking and then there’s forcing someone to be a manager, chef, waiter and book-keeper – only to pay them less than half the minimum wage.

In February, it was revealed contract cleaners in the state’s major supermarkets were being paid as little as $7 per hour for training and $14 for work. United Voice, the union representing cleaners, says this is widespread.

These were not accidents or genuine mistakes. This was business practice built on exploitation.

This goes to the heart of why unions are fighting to change the rules. The pendulum has swung too far in favour of big business. They have too much power and workers are paying the price.

With inequality at a 70-year high and job security and fair pay rises out of reach, workers have made their views clear – they are going to change the rules.