Award-reliant workers should not earn enough to live in Sydney, be able to afford lunch at work, or save for overseas holidays, according to a major employer group, in its submission to the Annual Wage Review.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry submission, filed on Friday, criticised Fair Work Commission research into the minimum income that award-reliant workers need for a “healthy living” – because it included $465 in weekly rental costs, set at a low-paid benchmark of about 60 per cent of median rents in Sydney.
ACCI instead said rental amounts should be aligned with rents in lower-priced capital cities, despite the $465 also being well below the median rent in every other capital city.
There are an estimated 224,454 award-reliant workers in Western Sydney that ACCI believes should not earn enough to live there.
The cost of renting a unit in Cabramatta ($420 a week) or in Fairfield ($450 a week) makes it clear that an allowance of $465 a week is scarcely enough.
In the same submission, ACCI argues that spending a mere $3.94 a day to cover the cost of lunch is too much and that putting aside $22.10 per week to save for an international trip to see family is unnecessary.
The bosses’ push to deny low-paid workers enough money to buy their own lunch contrasts with Coalition Leader Peter Dutton’s policy to spend at least $1.6 billion in taxpayers’ money each year on free lunches for bosses.
The Fair Work Commission’s budget standards show that a single person working full time on the current minimum wage of $915.90 falls about $236 a week short of the minimum income standards for a healthy living.
ACCI has put forward a pay increase of just 2.5 percent for lower-paid and award-reliant workers, barely matching inflation. Other employer groups have put forward claims that would see minimum wage workers cop a real pay cut of nearly $800 a year.
According to analysis by the Australia Institute, if the Fair Work Commission had agreed to ACCI’s pay claims over the past decade, minimum wage workers would be $160 a week worse off now.
This is a key reason why the ACTU is calling for a 4.5 percent increase in minimum wages so that lower-paid workers can make progress towards a decent standard of living.
Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary, Sally McManus:
“A major employer group does not think workers deserve enough pay to live in Western Sydney. This is an outrageous insult to working people.
“Where do employers expect the retail workers, hospitality and care workers of Western Sydney to live?
“It’s good enough for employers to get free lunches at taxpayers’ expense under Peter Dutton’s at least $1.6 billion a year policy – but bosses think spending $3.94 a day on lunch is too much for workers.
“The ACCI position is mean-spirited and unfair, and Australian Unions call on Peter Dutton to ignore them and instead back the Albanese Government’s commitment to workers receiving real wage rises in the next Annual Wage Review.”
