BY MELANIE SJOBERG
If you are one of the estimated 1.8 million low-paid workers in Australia reliant on an award for your wage, your pay packet will soon receive a $13 (before tax) boost, courtesy of the national wage case decision handed down by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission on May 2.
The decision raises the basic minimum award wage to $413.40 per week. Workers on a current award rate of between $490 and $590 per week were granted a $15 pay rise and those on more than $590 per week a $17 increase.
Estimated at around 3%, this rise goes nowhere near even the 6% cost of living increase since the introduction of the GST, let alone the real needs of people on low wages.
Employer groups and the federal government fought hard against the increases but were pleased by the small amount of the eventual rise. Workplace relations minister Tony Abbott said that the AIRC had made a balanced decision and that it was a "good result for low income families".
Parliamentarians meanwhile can look forward to an automatic 5% increase in their pay packets, giving them a $150-200 per week bonus.
The outcome has been described as "mean-spirited" and representing "a real wage cut for the lowest-paid workers" by ACTU president Sharan Burrow. Queensland Council of Unions secretary Grace Grace called the result "disappointing" but declared she would seek a flow-on to Queensland state workers. The NSW Labor Council has also demanded an immediate flow-on.
It has already been six months since the ACTU launched its Living Wage Campaign on November 1. At that time it lodged a claim for a $28 per week increase, which ACTU secretary Greg Combet argued was "fair, reasonable and affordable".
The ACTU claim was supported by thorough research that demonstrated the difficulties for low-paid workers.
The case noted research by the Smith Family released in November which showed that 40% of families living in poverty had one or both parents working. According to the charity's figures, 800,000 low-paid families go without food and thousands are unable to pay essential bills and rely on welfare and community services for survival.
The ACTU counterposed this to the successful results for companies, whose profits were up 44% last year and whose productivity had grown by an average of 2.7% over the past five years. Executive salaries had increased 26% over that period, the union federation pointed out.
These carefully constructed arguments and research demonstrating manifest inequities were disputed by the government and not upheld by the AIRC.
That, however, was not the wage case's only travesty — so too is the continued denial by ACTU leaders that some other tactic is necessary in order to achieve social justice outcomes for all workers.
Burrow has since said that, despite the adverse ruling, the ACTU "will continue to place applications on the table", adding that "only a Labor government would care for people".
If the wage case proves anything, though, it is that the employers, the government and the courts are not open to being convinced, even by the most accurate facts and figures; they are not interested in a fairer distribution of income. When in government, Labor has shown no such interest either.
Many in the union movement believe ACTU officials and union leaders need to take a much stronger approach to organising and mobilising workers to achieve wage justice. They point to the militant tactics pursued by Victorian construction and manufacturing unions, which won a 36-hour week and pattern bargaining arrangements, as a model for how to win real wage increases for low-income workers.