Australian wages growth has finally staggered back to pre-pandemic levels, with yesterday’s seasonally adjusted Wage Price Index (WPI) showing a rise of 2.2% for the year and a 0.6% rise for the September quarter.
That means real wages fell by 0.8% in the year to September 30.
We know that, as the Reserve Bank (RBA) has pointed out so often, Australian employers are a huge problem when it comes to improving wages growth. There’s a widespread resistance to paying decent wage rises, wage theft has been a core part of the business model of many industries, and some politically powerful sectors (like horticulture) profit off exploitation and abuse of workers.
The other massive impediment to wages growth is Scott Morrison. The data from the Bureau of Statistics showed private sector wages rose 2.4% over the 12 months, with the public sector trailing behind at 1.7%, reflecting tight caps imposed on public service salaries.
NSW has ditched its public service pay freeze and public servants there will get 2.5%. The Andrews government has budgeted for a miserly 2% rise in Victoria. But the Morrison government has retained its policy to keep public sector wages to no more than private sector growth — which until the September quarter has been below 2%. Will Morrison and his right-hand man Ben Morton now give public servants a 2.4% pay rise? Don’t count on it.
Meantime Australian Public Service managers are fighting a losing battle to recruit staff — especially given professional services saw the biggest wages growth over the last year, at 3.4%
And despite a broader fiscal policy to stimulate employment, the government is working hard in other areas to stifle wages growth. It uses its resources to enforce exploitation in horticulture, where conditions for Pacific Islander workers have more in common with the antebellum South than a 21st century economy. It is going full steam ahead on a new agriculture visa designed to enable farmers to access cheap, easily exploited labour from ASEAN countries. And Morrison is rushing to ensure hundreds of thousands of temporary migrants — on temporary worker visas, or foreign students — can return through reopened borders as quickly as possible to sate business demands for foreign labour.
This all directly counters the Reserve Bank’s laser-like focus on wages growth as the key input to a sustainable increase in inflation. The RBA wants to get monetary policy back to normal, and end our reliance on strong stimulus via minimum interest rates. But it’s a difficult challenge — remember, we had the strongest jobs boom in history from 2015 to 2019 and despite that, wage growth stagnated right up to the start of the pandemic. The RBA can’t do that if the federal government is merely paying lip service to the need for wages growth while, like business, doing everything it can to undermine it.
We’re back to the pre-pandemic tension between the RBA and the government. Last time it was over the need for more fiscal stimulus, which was never resolved until the pandemic. Now it’s over wages growth and the need for the Coalition to ignore the demands of its donors and actually support real wages growth.
If you want a decent pay rise, move to Tasmania, which has led the nation in WPI growth for the whole of 2021. The Tasmanian government did not impose a wages freeze on rank-and-file public sector employees during the pandemic, and public sector wages growth in that state has been consistently strong since 2019. And private sector wages growth in Tasmania hit 3% in the September quarter — the kind of territory the RBA wants to see.
Unfortunately it’s exactly the result Scott Morrison and his business mates don’t want.
The senior management ie assistant secretaries and above have the cushy jobs in the public service. The middle and lower managers and workers doing the “spade work” of the department and are under huge pressure to complete large volumes of work with severe time constraints. The Health Department had 3 restructures from July 2020 to August 2021. First when that pompous old fool Brendan Murphy took over as Dept. Secretary and another two to try to get the vaccine rollout going. These restructures involved nearly all staff taking new positions in the middle of the covid19 assault on our country. Combined with ministry using outside consultants to provide reports the ministers want to hear rather than using the powerful resources of the department. The last few governments have just about gutted the public service of its role as a provider of fearless and frank advice to the government.
Where have white collar government employees been admitting to not working hard?
The best places to do research on such matters!
OK, so to go back to your initial provocative generalisation about public servants, and the thrust of the article, you’d like to reduce the wages of public servants, eh? Well, you’d be glad that it’s still happening to their real wages, as explained in the article. But public servants’ wage increases point the way to rises for the rest of the working population, both in terms of the justification they lend to wage claims by other sectors and in terms of such a large segment of the workforce spending less into the economy. You’d be stupid to oppose their wages’ increasing just because you have a generalised and unfounded feeling that they don’t work hard enough – something to do with the notion that because they sit at desks they must be web surfing all day. Don’t know how you’re coping with the knowledge that so many ‘office workers’ including public servants now work at home: their productivity must be zero!
In any case, the article makes it clear that the government wants to reduce wage growth for most workers, including you, and restricting or preventing public service wage increases is only one of the means they’ll employ to achieve that goal. The article isn’t expressing more care ‘about white collar government employees’ than anyone else. And you haven’t any reason, bar prejudice as I see it, to get stuck into them – yet praising the hard working ‘lawyers and bankers’ – instead of mounting an argument for increasing the wages of all in an economy that’s become reliant on casualised, insecure, poorly paid labour (such as university lecturers, believe it or not).
Loved the reference to the antebellum South, do I feel an Australian version of Gone With the Wind coming on?
It’s amazing how accepting we have become of international students coming here to work (on the cheap) rather than study. Dodgy employment practices and an increased chance of failing their courses due to excessive part-time (sic) work- how good is Australia?
interesting how they want to bring in overseas workers over training local workers but then again they would have to pay min wage for a start
Geez you love the old generalisations. As for supermarket employees. Try getting assistance to find a product or get service at the deli. See what I just did was generalise. It’s not based in fact. Uke your conclusions are not either
By extension, you believe a large proportion of public service office staff are?
Based on the Reddit/Whirlpool research institute?
I think a lot of people care. The unions care. They want secure, well-paid jobs for all workers rather than employers bringing in workers from overseas whom they can treat badly and underpay.
‘uni people make money’
Who are the ‘uni people’? You can’t be talking about the ‘white-collar’ people who do the teaching, as most of them (80% ie. about 100,000 in Australia) are casually employed, insecure in their jobs, and poorly paid/overworked.
You are making a significant across the board claim or stereotype encouraged by Oz media that international students are predominantly dodgy; satisfies the need to attack universities and education, mixed in with some long standing xenophobia in media describing them as ‘immigrants’.
Fact is nobody, and this includes those within the international education sector, has any valid or reliable behavioural research on international students’ work or employment habits; media and society prefer to present perceptions, feelings and beliefs that bypass rational analysis.
The thing that gets me is that it is in the governments interest to have higher wages but they do all they can to push them down, there seems to be a conflict of interest some were . To me higher wages gives more to the government in higher income tax as wages go to a higher taxable income , gives more people more monies to spend and invest ,ore goods and services sold e.c.t, e.c.t the reality is it is better for the economy. Around a 5 % increase in wages epically for the low to middle income earners per year would do wonders, just don’t hold your breath in it happing.
Just not in their DNA dune . .
Regardless of your sound logic, their punitive mentality just gets the better of them.
Are you familiar with Aesop’s story about the frog and the scorpion?
And right there is your proof that currency issuing governments do not need to tax to spend, because their budget is nothing like a household budget.
Political parties, however, do need donations. There’s your conflict of interest. Mind you, the LNP have certainly shown the way on spending public money like it’s their own personal kitty- both federally and in NSW.
Try applying for one.