Coalition slammed for wage inaction
THE average Australian worker has been cheated out of $10,000 over the past decade because wages haven’t kept up with productivity gains, a new report argues.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions laid the blame at the Coalition’s feet in the blistering report, titled “Morrison missing in action on wages”.
It said workers had become 10.3 per cent more productive during the Coalition’s time in government, churning out goods and services at a faster rate than before.
But the fruits of their labour had ended up as company profits instead of increased salaries, which the ACTU claimed was a deliberate outcome of the government’s economic policies.
“If real wages had kept pace with productivity since 2013, the average worker would be $10,000 better off,” the ACTU said.
The report said productivity had grown six times faster than real private sector wages, which increased by 1.6 per cent.
The peak body for Australian unions calculated that Australians had lost out on nearly $2000 so far in 2022.
The same workers would be earning another $74 a week in today’s wages if salaries had reflected increases in productivity since 2013, when the Coalition came to power.
The startling figures come as inflation recently hit 5.1 per cent, dwarfing wage growth that sits at 2.3 per cent.
Productivity was defined as the ability of workers and businesses to produce goods and services.
The report says workers would have pocketed $3868 in the last 12 months alone if wages had kept up with productivity growth.
The report claims several actions by the Coalition exacerbate the problem. These include promoting insecure work, opposing real wage rises in the annual wage review, capping public sector pay rises and failing to plug the gender wage gap.
The report also says the Coalition has “allowed wage theft,” used legal “loopholes” to circumvent enterprise bargaining agreements and tried to remove the better off overall test – or BOOT – in collective bargaining.
ACTU secretary Sally Mcmanus argued the government’s policies “deliberately” suppressed wages.
“The cost of living crisis that workers are currently experiencing has been created by nearly a decade of record-low wage growth under this government – this is a crisis that could have been avoided if (Prime Minister Scott) Morrison had acted to support workers getting reasonable pay rises,” Ms Mcmanus said in a statement.
“Every time workers have tried to get pay increases, whether it be the annual wage review, aged care workers or their own workers, this government has acted to keep wage growth down.
“Scott Morrison refuses to do the work to close the loopholes that have seen the continual growth of insecure work. This has had a huge impact on workers’ bargaining power.”