BY MELANIE SJOBERG
A May 1 decision by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission has granted a $15 per week safety-net increase to those awards applying to workers forced to rely on the basic rate.
The decision caused a collective whine from employer groups that employers can't afford it and that the economy will be ruined. The ACTU welcomed the decision as a victory for low-paid workers, even though the union federation had argued for a $24 a week rise.
The payment will apply to the approximately 20% of the work force (1.7 million workers) who are not covered by enterprise agreements, primarily non-unionised process workers in food or manufacturing, and those in basic clerical or customer service positions.
The Australian Industry Group (AIG) claimed that the AIRC should have waited until the release of the latest inflation figures, rather than base the decision on "overly optimistic [predictions] for the domestic and international economies for the next 12 months". Rupert Murdoch's Australian editorialised on May 2 against the rise, claiming that it threatens new job creation.
Meanwhile, the average salaries of executives, presumably including those at the Australian and the AIG, have risen by more than 20% in the last year.
The AIG's economic prognosis also conveniently ignores the fact that company profits were up by more than 23% for the year ending December 1999. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, revenues for 1999 in a wide range of sectors were up: metals products grew 52%, food, beverage and tobacco 14.4% and printing publishing and recorded media 13.1%. Average annual wage increases in those sectors rose by only around 4% during the same period.
Even given this pathetic $15 a week increase, most workers on basic award rates will struggle to survive. The minimum wage will increase to only $400.40 per week (just over $20,000 annually).
Those workers with a dependent spouse and/or children will need additional support payments from Centrelink to remain at subsistence level, a sign of how much employers are getting away with.