Unions are seeking a $28 a week pay rise for Australia’s lowest paid workers, to help ensure all members of our community can participate in the nation’s strong economic growth.
The ACTU will today lodge its submission to Fair Work Australia’s annual wage review to increase the award wage for the lowest paid workers to $597.90. This would mean a 74c/hour increase from $15 an hour.
ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said it would seek a $28 a week increase in the National Minimum Wage and in other award minimum wages up to the benchmark tradesperson’s rate; and a 4.2% increase for other award workers.
“For the majority of award-dependent workers we are seeking a 4.2% increase,” Mr Lawrence said.
“This modest wage increase for our 1.4 million lowest paid workers - one in six of the workforce – is necessary to allow them to share in Australia’s economic prosperity.
“Every Australian deserves a decent standard of living and the nation’s strong economic growth should not be a spectator support for the low-paid. Our economy is growing, profits are at record levels, and unemployment is low. But living costs are rising sharply for the low-paid.
“Minimum wage workers are the backbone of the economy. They are the people who clean our schools and shopping centres, serve us in hotels, who take care of our elderly and our children.
“These are people we cannot live without, yet their value is not reflected in their pay packets. We must ensure they are not left behind.”
Last year, the ACTU won a $26 a week increase for minimum wage workers but that came after a wage freeze in 2009 off the back of the global economic downturn.
Mr Lawrence said that Australia’s minimum wage of $569.90 now equated to just 44.7 per cent of the average Australian income – down from 50.5 per cent a decade ago.
“While the average Australian income has jumped 21 per cent in real terms since 2000 and company profits have increased by 50% in the past five years alone, the real value of the minimum wage has increased just 7.1 per cent,
“Meanwhile, the measure of household living costs - the Analytical Living Cost Index - jumped 4.5 per cent in 2010 alone. What we are seeking will help to bridge a gap that has become too wide.
“The union claim on behalf of minimum wage workers is modest and affordable. It will have a negligible impact on inflation and on labour costs, and there is no credible evidence that it will impact on employment.
An extra $28 a week is modest in comparison to the growing gap between what minimum wage earners are paid and what companies are earning in profits.”
Media conference to announce the ACTU's 2011 claim