Penalty
rates for Sunday workers – and, by the way, some night workers – are
being cut. It’s claimed that 700,000 pay packets will be affected when
Australians check their bank accounts this coming week. What’s the
reverse of an unexpected windfall? I guess it’s a punch in the face –
and the workers affected have been punched hard, with some estimated to
lose up to $6,000 a year.
The decision was made by the Fair Work Commission after a long period of intense lobbying from business interests. If you’re wondering why Australia’s business community would be seeking to cut workers’ pay when their profits are up by 39.7% on last year alone, there’s an answer, and it’s greed. A massive $65bn company tax cut that the Liberal/National government handed over to the business community in this budget did not actually slake corporate Australia’s thirst for more, more, more. Just in the March quarter, company profits rose by 6%. Wage growth: 0.3%.
Friends, that’s something of a problem. Reports this week also revealed that the modern trend of hoarding profits, rather than sharing them in pay rises, is at a level of disparity not seen in this country since the second world war, and the wage price index is at a record low.
The government remains in thrall to the old neoliberal fantasy that wealth will “trickle down”; it doesn’t, it hasn’t, it sits in a stagnant pool. Rather than flushing through the economy, it drags on economic growth. At the same time, household debt levels are also at record levels. There’s some nervousness of what might happen when interest rates, inevitably, rise again. To head off a crisis, wages need to go up – even those notorious communists the, um, Reserve Bank of Australia, believe low pay is a crisis in itself. The Reserve Bank governor himself has been out exhorting workers to demand pay rises.
Malcolm Turnbull and his crew, to return to my original point, have been cutting pay – lending some credence to the rumour that being super filthy rich is no great qualifier for running an economy ... [cough!] Donald Trump. The decision to reduce penalty rates may have been made by the Fair Work Commission, but don’t believe that the Coalition were standing idly by. Last week, Labor scrambled together enough crossbenchers in the Senate to get up a bill blocking the cuts. When presented to the lower house, the government used its majority to ensure the bill’s defeat. They did allow their own MP George Christensen to express dissent to it – though they were more or less obliged to do so. The issue is causing Christensen significant grief in his electorate already.
Yes, a $22 a week minimum wage rise was granted by Fair Work at the beginning of the month. No, it doesn’t cancel out the effect of the penalty rate cut – nor has it made the lowest-paid wages in the economy enough to live on. The ACTU said it was not enough, ACCER said it was woefully inadequate and even Fair Work itself admitted it wasn’t enough to lift households out of actual poverty. Business groups whined about it, anyway.
With such a vast number of people affected by this cut to their pay, one wonders just how the government expects to contain the electoral damage merely to Christensen. And these are just the retail, hospitality and pharmacy Sunday workers who’ve taken a hit with this. Nurses, emergency service workers and others working Sundays have every reason to believe that they will be next. Why?
Because when Malcolm Turnbull pledged to govern for “freedom, the individual and the market” the day he stood victorious in the blood of Tony Abbott, he was speaking to a very specific, if simple, set of political values. They’re values in which he, as one of the richest men in the country, runs a government that is granting him both a personal tax cut of nearly $7,000 and a pay rise of $10,000 on no less than the same day that he punishes a Sunday worker in the fast food industry of up to $6,000 a year.
There’s a quote from Turnbull back during the hated WorkChoices era that Labor have been using to illustrate the prime minister’s own symbolic universe. “You have to be free to let the market do its work,” quoth Turnbull, “and let the cost of setting the clearing price, be it for labour, home units or loaves of bread be as low as possible.”
Labour is, of course, the obligation of the vast majority of the voting adult electorate. To be conceived of as a bakery product by the prime minister himself is a concern. It’s Dave Noonan from the CFMEU who began the habit of referring to Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter as naught but the top hat emoji, and easy to see why it’s caught on. This is where we are, Australia: it’s top hats versus bread loaves. For all our sakes, I hope the bread loaves win.
The decision was made by the Fair Work Commission after a long period of intense lobbying from business interests. If you’re wondering why Australia’s business community would be seeking to cut workers’ pay when their profits are up by 39.7% on last year alone, there’s an answer, and it’s greed. A massive $65bn company tax cut that the Liberal/National government handed over to the business community in this budget did not actually slake corporate Australia’s thirst for more, more, more. Just in the March quarter, company profits rose by 6%. Wage growth: 0.3%.
Friends, that’s something of a problem. Reports this week also revealed that the modern trend of hoarding profits, rather than sharing them in pay rises, is at a level of disparity not seen in this country since the second world war, and the wage price index is at a record low.
The government remains in thrall to the old neoliberal fantasy that wealth will “trickle down”; it doesn’t, it hasn’t, it sits in a stagnant pool. Rather than flushing through the economy, it drags on economic growth. At the same time, household debt levels are also at record levels. There’s some nervousness of what might happen when interest rates, inevitably, rise again. To head off a crisis, wages need to go up – even those notorious communists the, um, Reserve Bank of Australia, believe low pay is a crisis in itself. The Reserve Bank governor himself has been out exhorting workers to demand pay rises.
Malcolm Turnbull and his crew, to return to my original point, have been cutting pay – lending some credence to the rumour that being super filthy rich is no great qualifier for running an economy ... [cough!] Donald Trump. The decision to reduce penalty rates may have been made by the Fair Work Commission, but don’t believe that the Coalition were standing idly by. Last week, Labor scrambled together enough crossbenchers in the Senate to get up a bill blocking the cuts. When presented to the lower house, the government used its majority to ensure the bill’s defeat. They did allow their own MP George Christensen to express dissent to it – though they were more or less obliged to do so. The issue is causing Christensen significant grief in his electorate already.
Yes, a $22 a week minimum wage rise was granted by Fair Work at the beginning of the month. No, it doesn’t cancel out the effect of the penalty rate cut – nor has it made the lowest-paid wages in the economy enough to live on. The ACTU said it was not enough, ACCER said it was woefully inadequate and even Fair Work itself admitted it wasn’t enough to lift households out of actual poverty. Business groups whined about it, anyway.
With such a vast number of people affected by this cut to their pay, one wonders just how the government expects to contain the electoral damage merely to Christensen. And these are just the retail, hospitality and pharmacy Sunday workers who’ve taken a hit with this. Nurses, emergency service workers and others working Sundays have every reason to believe that they will be next. Why?
Because when Malcolm Turnbull pledged to govern for “freedom, the individual and the market” the day he stood victorious in the blood of Tony Abbott, he was speaking to a very specific, if simple, set of political values. They’re values in which he, as one of the richest men in the country, runs a government that is granting him both a personal tax cut of nearly $7,000 and a pay rise of $10,000 on no less than the same day that he punishes a Sunday worker in the fast food industry of up to $6,000 a year.
There’s a quote from Turnbull back during the hated WorkChoices era that Labor have been using to illustrate the prime minister’s own symbolic universe. “You have to be free to let the market do its work,” quoth Turnbull, “and let the cost of setting the clearing price, be it for labour, home units or loaves of bread be as low as possible.”
Labour is, of course, the obligation of the vast majority of the voting adult electorate. To be conceived of as a bakery product by the prime minister himself is a concern. It’s Dave Noonan from the CFMEU who began the habit of referring to Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter as naught but the top hat emoji, and easy to see why it’s caught on. This is where we are, Australia: it’s top hats versus bread loaves. For all our sakes, I hope the bread loaves win.
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