I did cleaning for a while. Of all the jobs I have been employed to do, cleaning was the worst. Easy work, except for the way the cleaners are treated, often by some of the most obnoxious office workers.

There was the juvenile who would walk around the office throwing out paper clips all over the floor for the cleaners to find and clean up.

Another group of juveniles would have their lunch each day at the conference table, which was situated on carpet, and then sweep their crumbs from the table directly onto the carpet.

The pay is so low that cleaning work is actually highly stressful. There is constant worry about getting enough money to pay even the most basic bills, and I often lived on one meal a day, which was baked beans mixed with rice.

Quite often the cleaners had to empty rubbish bins and thrown out food such as half-eaten lunches, when we hadn’t had anything to eat at all that day.

I can understand if someone is on a high wage if they are working long hours, but I have minimal regard for people who are wasteful, or spend so much of their money on status symbols.

I also have minimal regard for people who feed off the taxpayer, while having total contempt for the taxpayer, and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics.

"and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics"..you forgot artists and australia's entire farming sector

E. Sykes
I haven’t had that much to do with artists, but I do know that some of them do it quite tough.

I have had something to do with farmers, and many do it tough, but many are also quite innovative, and Australia is now heavily dependant on primary producers.

I have had something to do with teachers, and they whinge much more than farmers, while lieing to the public that they have an “excellent” education system, while showing almost no innovation, while constantly having their hand out for more and more taxpayer funding.

I did meet quite a few people from different backgrounds while cleaning, but I have never heard of an ex-teacher doing cleaning (too much cleaning involved I would think).

"also have minimal regard for people who feed off the taxpayer, while having total contempt for the taxpayer, and the number one people who appear to be this way right now would be teachers and academics."

But you're fine with lawyers, real estate agents, investment bankers etc?

Actually, school teachers are part of that small minority in Oz who make -or exceed- the 'average' wage.
They are also, not coincidentally, in the minority of occupations which has retained a strong union, and the willingness (not to mention economic ability) to go on strike.
Sadly, most of them seem quite happy to be on that side of the Gap, and show little inclination to drag the rest up with them.
Where's the fun in being rich, if nobody's poor?

From my book Enterprise and Venture Capital 5th Edition Allen & Unwin June 2009:

"...why (are) institutional equity fund managers paid 10-20 times the salaries of public sector teachers?
• First, there are many teachers to one buyer-the Department of Education. By contrast there are around 100 buyers of fund managers in Australia but the pool of managers is limited.
• There is no measure of how good a teacher is except by hearsay. By contrast there are at least three actuarial firms measuring the performance of fund managers. The buyers know who are the best performers and exactly what they have achieved in the past.
• Standardisation of the curriculum means the switching costs between teachers is low and the buyer is indifferent to the quality.

On the other hand good fund managers can and generally do take their clients with them so, to the employing institution, the switching costs, in terms of lost revenue, can be very high.

All these factors explain why fund managers are highly paid while teachers are poorly paid. What is interesting is that the teacher's union is ensuring that status quo remains."

Although even more interesting now is that Julia Gillard is trying to implement some form of performance monitoring over the protests of the teachers' unions

"Teachers are poorly paid"?
A high school teacher with 10 years experience is typically on about $75k. That might be low compared to fund managers, but it's about double the median wage.
If teachers, making double that of 50% of Australians are poorly paid, what about the rest of us?

The median wage is $57,000 last time I checked on ABS. So a teacher with ten years experience isn't esrning much relative to their skills.

Looks like a very well researched and written article. However having a keen interest in this area I read a book 2 years ago about this exact topic. Written by Prof Richard Wilkinson and titled "The impact of inequality; how to make sick societies healthier" it was a fantastic read. I see the author has referenced a few of this authors research in his work. I have a clear recollection that much of the book was in direct contrast to this article. Research was presented which I believe implied quite clearly inequality as well as increasingly diverse populations reduced life expectancy. We as humans function best when we live in a society with people who we feel are like us, with similar beliefs, and where we see a sense of fairness, justice and equality of treatment. For anyone interested in improving the lives and health of people and how societies function it is a really great read.

Lucy said,
"The median wage is $57,000 last time I checked on ABS. So a teacher with ten years experience isn't esrning much relative to their skills."

Whereas a UNSW Law (the Law school with the easiest entry marks in the country in the 90s) graduate with twenty years experience on 170K is probably esrning 10 times what they are worth.

With respect Lucy, the 'average' wage -taken from averaging the highest to the lowest wage- is $57k. The median wage -that which 50% of the population makes less than- is closer to $37k.
As there are only a handful of people making really high wages, while millions make very low wages, the disparity between the average and the median is a direct reflection of the widening gap.
Need I point out that those we pay to represent us are amongst the very highest paid?
I'm convinced forcing amalgamations of councils in Qld was at least in part about justifying ridiculous pay packets for councillors and mayors. How long before politicians of all stripes start making comparisons?
The only advantage of institutions getting bigger and bigger is that it funnels wealth into fewer and fewer hands, at the very top.
The crime of the millennium left millions of people homeless and unemployed, largely because of companies 'too big to be allowed to fail'. The answer to this dilemma? Allow the biggest financial institutions and car companies to merge and amalgamate and get bigger still.
I maintain the defining characteristic of true Humanity is our empathy; our ability to imagine ourselves in someone else's place.
History has demonstrated clearly that the bigger the gap between rich and poor, or more importantly between the powerful and 'the masses', this empathy is inevitably replaced by a profound contempt, on both sides; leading to war and revolution.

I have only read the first post.

It is simply called 'education'. Get a better education/qualification and you don't have to be a cleaner.

Rechtub,
Cleaners would have to be some of the gentlest and most tolerant of people. They have to be, to put up with the crap so often handed out to them by arrogant and aloof people who think of themselves as being above it all.

In fact, I believe it would be a good training exercise for various members of society to undertake cleaning, and practice empting other people’s rubbish bins and cleaning their toilets.

Perhaps 6 months duty at cleaning for a teacher, 6 months for a politician, 12 months for a bank manager, 18 months for a solicitor, and 2 years for an academic in an Australian university.

This article completely ignores the elephant in the room - if the value of your labour in the marketplace is low or your skills are very easily replaced your wage will be low. The corollary is touched on by the mentioning of higher educated and skilled professions being paid more.

So, the solution for people at the low end of the pay scale that WANT to earn more is to skill up, and work towards a better paying position. The key word here is WANT.
I find that most of those that want the higher dollars are totally unwilling to make the sacrifices that go along with the higher pay package. How bad do you want it? Enough to go back to school? Start (and finish) a uni degree? Are you willing to move to a different city or state or country to find the right position? Are you willing to work 16 hour days for weeks on end if the circumstances demand it? These are all your personal choices.

Find a person that makes the kind of salary you want and do a little research into why they are paid that quantity. Does that person have unique skills? Has the person taken a large personal risk to achieve that position? How much responsibility does that person have? How many hours do they work on an average day? Are they on call 24/7? Then make and execute a plan for yourself. If you are unwilling to do this you are wasting everyone's time by your "poor me" whinging.

The bottom line is to be paid a high salary package you must have tangible, unique skills that are in high demand and the willingness and ability to deploy those skills professionally anywhere they are required. Life is all choices.

Bruce,
Perhaps a means to determine an appropriate level of pay is to pay someone on what they produce. If someone produces something that in turn produces wealth for others, then that person should be well rewarded.

Unfortunately, we seem to be very well rewarding people who produce very little, and just feed off the system. Examples would be real estate agents, solicitors etc who are just feeders on society, because they produce basically nothing.

I would also include most teachers and academics in this group. Australia is now in the bottom half of comparable countries in terms of litaeracy and numeracy, and there would not be one aspect of education that shows any signs of improvement.

Schools and universities also use very little that is produced inside the country, and most of what is in a school or university is imported. So schools and universities have now become feeders on the whole country.

Bruce and rehctub, as worker and as an academic I totally agree with you. It pays to be strategic and hard-working.

Sorry Vanna but I'm not sure what the going rate is for nonsensical whinging.

David Jennings,
What is the education system actually producing?

It has become a half-rate education system that does not show any signs of improvement in any area.

Ultimately, someone should be paid according to what they actually produce, and you have to get better and better at what you produce.

Vanna, have you actually in the education system? Have you been to university? Did you get a job based on the discipline you studied? Or did you go to tafe or any other training institute and get a real skill?

If you haven't been in the system, how can you really judge it? Especially when you don't seem to get how the economy works.

"Australia is now in the bottom half of comparable countries in terms of litaeracy and numeracy, and there would not be one aspect of education that shows any signs of improvement."

Those are incredibly sweeping statements. How can you back those up?

David Jennings,
Where does the data come from?

As an aware academic, I thought you would already know.

International Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL)

http://nces.ed.gov/Surveys/ALL/issuebrief.asp

The Australian education system has not shown any signs of improvement in any area for many years.

You may also find this press release quite interesting: -

http://www.tasmaniatogether.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/77671/2009_05_21_Adult_Literacy_-_Small_Business_Council.pdf

Australia has a 99% adult literacy rate.

The survey you cited does not include Australia. But Australia took part in the 2006 ALLS survey.

At any rate even if Level 1 is "the lowest measured level of literacy" then 99% of the seven million people sampled met the standard of basic literacy.

I struggle to see how a press release from the Business Council of Tasmania adds any weight to your argument.

There is a more obvious flaw in your argument, in that the percentage of Australians who actually go to university isn't that high. So you can't really use the ALLS survey to discredit the universities.

Given that literacy is also developed at home its a bit of leap to blame schools entirely for the fact that some kids are not at the Level 3 standard.

At any rate the ABS suggests a slight improvement in the 2006 survey from the 1996 Survey.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/4228.0Main%20Features22006%20(Reissue)?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=4228.0&issue=2006%20(Reissue)&num=&view=

Its not much use having a discussion on differences in wages and salaries if a UNSW Law graduate cannot understand simple 4th grade concepts of mean(average) and median(the 50% percentile figure). As an example

"The median wage is $57,000 last time I checked on ABS. So a teacher with ten years experience isn't esrning much relative to their skills.
Posted by Lucy Montgomery, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 11:04:23 PM"

No Lucy, that is the mean (average) figure. Check the ABS website again. The figure for median is closer to 40K.

As Lucy said earlier
"For the record, I'm smarter than you, I'm better educated and since I'm guessing that you were fibbing about being a doctor, I think its fair to say I'm better off."
and
"Now when I did law at UNSW in the 1990's the tertiary entrance rank for school leavers was well into the 90's. From memory the cut-off was 98.7 and I scored 99.2. I hope that doesn't make you feel small or inadequate".

How could you possibly score 99.2 in the HSC and not know the difference between mean and median. I won't make you even further confused by mentioning mode.

Well as a graduate of UNSW Law school (the lowest entry mark law school in NSW in the 90s) that probably qualifies you to gain automatic entry to 4th grade maths class

Ozzie your obsession with Lucy is both creepy and disturbing. Why do you have such an issue with somebody that you will continue to chase them from thread to thread? I think I've asked you this before, but is it the fact that she's intelligent, educated, FEMALE, and probably earning more than you, the reason why you keep doing this?

Get over it mate. You are giving the male gender a bad name.

David,
You think she is intelligent, however you are just an idiot, leftist politically correct academic who can't make it in the real world. Your opinion earlier that the term "Medical practitioner included general hospital workers" puts you in the same class as Lucy, and gives little credit to anything else you say.
As I stated above, a 4th grader knows the difference between median and mean, and a 6th grader knows what a Medical Practitioner is.

Get over it mate. You give evolution a bad name.

Dear vanna

I note your reference to lawyers and real estate agents.

Although many agents are sharks, many are hard working and put in countless hours in many areas, including inspections, marketing and negotiating, all of which are 'un-paid' until the contract settles.

Often they sell something only to see the buyers being unable to obtain finance or the seller not disclosing everything and the contract crashes.

Would you work for 8/10ths of your week without pay? They often do!

Lawyers.
The majority work hard at school. They then attend uni and, while most of us are out enjoying a 'social life', they are often studying to better themselves, in the hope that one day they will be able to earn what most of us see as 'huge money', but it is not without sacrafice.

Remember, we are all presented with that same opportunity.

Now as for being paid for what you produce, a smart head will always out perform a good set of hands.

In any case, you will struggle to find support for your theory.

Actually you are not quite right David Jennings when you say "Australia has a 99% adult literacy rate."

For some time I have been involved in adult literacy and it is given that some 50% of Australian adults have some degree of illiteracy. Anywhere from partial to total. This is a figure that is not generally realised. I have often found it interesting to observe the number of adults in a doctors waiting room, for instance, who never pick up anything to read. Instead a great proportion just sit there and do nothing. Perhaps this is some indication of an inability to read the written word. People who can't read go to great lengths to disguise this fact of course.

Correct/Factual Snake. And...we are all unique with our own intelligence, talents and skills therefore never to be rated!

I followed the link to the ABS study and I agree that on its own terms it does suggest a 99% literacy rate. Whether that is literate enough to be highly successful is another question.

Ozzie (aka my stalker), you're wrong by about 20K. I won't tell you which way though.
I'm so glad that this is an anonymous site. It would suck to meet a creep like you.

David Jennings
If you dig a little deeper, you will find that the Australian Bureau of Statistics survey is closely related to the International Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey.

When comparing similar countries, (and it has been done), the Australian education system is very mediocre indeed.

When 30% of the workforce in Tasmania is now classed as being illiterate, and other states are not much better, it does make one wonder about the state of the education system, that so often likes to describe itself as being “excellent”.

And who taught the teachers to teach so many students to be illiterate and innumerate? The universities taught the teachers to teach so many students to be illiterate and innumerate.

And who originally taught the parents who had the children who are now illiterate and innumerate? The teachers originally taught the parents who had the children who are now illiterate and innumerate.

I rest my case, (unless you wish to proceed).

Rehtcub,

People such as real estate agents and solicitors take money from someone, extract a percentage for their own bank accounts, and pass the remainder on.

They produce nothing, export nothing, and generate no wealth. They are feeders and not producers, and you can’t run a country for very long if most of the people in it are feeders.

As for “smart heads” verses “a good set of hands”, modern companies now want both. They want smart heads AND a good set of hands.

I know that many academics consider themselves to be “white collar” and somehow elite, but seek employment in a new greenfield site and you will quickly learn that there is no such thing as white collar / blue collar at those sites, because it is TOO INEFFICIENT.

White collar / blue collar is old school, (or old university), and to retain the notion of “white collar” shows how elitist and archaic most of the universities in Australia actually are.

Please stay awake and get with it, (before its too late).

But if real estate agents and lawyers don't add value then why do people pay them? The fact is that they have a skill set that adds value to a transaction, be it drafting a workable contract or making a house saleable.

There is also an obvious circularity in Vanna's argument against teachers. The teachers are bad, the teachers taught the parents, then the parents taught the children... but who taught the teachers? The academics!! But who taught the academics ... well..
The education sector is a little bit more complicated than that. Its easy to run down teachers.

Grim if the median wage is $37,500 then yes we do have to 'mind the gap' because it would be hard to pay off a mortgage on that income. It would be hard to pay off most mortgages on $75,000.

Still if the starting salary is now about $54,000, then yes that is above median wage, but its still below average wage. It also means that after ten years they've only added $21,000 to their wage. But surely in most cases their skills and experience have increased a lot more. The other issue is how would you get the smartest Australian graduates to go into teaching? Leaving aside the issue of median wage, if the rate of salary increase is low, wouldn't these graduates just go where they will be best compensated?

Lucy Montgomery,
People such as real estate agents and solicitors don’t add value, they add costs and add artificial value. (IE value on paper only).

This is what happened in the US, where artificial house price values finally caught up with the country, and then everything came crashing down.

If teachers and academics want more money, then perhaps they can get a second job like everyone else. I’ve been employed by 3 companies at the same time, doing one full time job and 2 part time jobs.

It could reach the stage where everyone in the public has to have at least 2 jobs to pay for public servants who only want one job, and then they only want to work no more than 38 hrs per week.

I can just imagine a teacher or academic doing cleaning at night to supplement their income (like so many other people are presently doing).

Vanna,

I can see the appeal of disliking lawyers and real estate agents, but have you ever looked at what it takes to become a lawyer or read any of thousands of acts etc. that make up the law? Not fun let me tell you.
Have you considered what a hassle it would be to show a property you are selling every time some tyre kicker wants to see it when they're not even in the market, or when you finally get a contract, dealing with the lawyers etc.?

I'm no lawyer but have studied aspects of the law relating to my field, and let me tell you it ain't fun, and it's very hard to apply to a given situation without encyclopedic knowledge of all that has gone before.
I've had law lecturers who can recite letter and verse the act or previous judgement that relates to pretty much any scenario you throw at them. I'd want them on my side were I to be dropped in the proverbial.
As for the agents, I've bought/sold houses, and I grant you there are plenty of scumbags out there, but I have have also had excellent experiences where they made my life so much easier, and got me more money than I was expecting, which you would have to agree is worth the fee.

I guess I'm just saying things aren't so cut and dry.

Oh, and btw, I've worked in offices for many years, and in my experience most cleaners do a half arsed job by my standards, if they do anything at all.

Cuts both ways.

Rechts,

Being able to recite something didn't help the US much.

If as you say, real estate agents, solicitors, teachers etc are highly skilled people, then they should be able to clean their own offices. At $20 per hour, it adds up by the end of the week, and they can spend more on status symbols.

Grim, it is true that the asymmetrical distribution of earnings means that average earnings are higher than median earnings, but the gap is smaller than you suggest. According to the ABS, in May 2008 median weekly earnings of full-time employees were $55,328, while average earnings were $64,345. For all employees (including part-timers) the median was $43,316 and the average was $49,811

http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1E07D323FDE698C2CA2575D700188C43/$File/63060_aug%202008.pdf p.19

Since then earnings have risen by about 8%

Vanna you are full of crap.

A lot of people work very hard to develop a trade or a skill. Just because they don't make anything or grow anything doesn't mean they aren't doing something useful. Its actually you who is stuck in the od economy.

Rhian, the link you provided was to a survey of a selected range of industries, totalling 57,000 employees. Hardly a comprehensive study.
Isn't it interesting that Governments can -and do- give very precise figures for their 'average' wage, (the last one I saw was $57, 852) yet the median figure is so hard to find. Could it be because politicians can make the average wage higher, simply by giving themselves a pay rise? The median wage, of course, is unaffected by such a manoeuvre.
This site offers some interesting statistics:
http://www.abcdiamond.com/australia/australian-median-wage/
What is most interesting is the percentage rate quoted; the median was around 90% of the average a few decades ago, now it is down to 85%, reinforcing the article's point that the gap is widening.
Bruce, your elephant is not only not in the room, I wouldn't even put it on the front porch. The author never suggested the professionals should not be paid more than the cleaners; the question is by how much.
As one with fond memories of the 60's and 70's -affordable housing, one income families, disposable income- I believe the gap between the median and average CEO's then was about one to 30 ($10,000 to $300,000) whereas now it is more than one to 50 ($40,000 to 2mil+ average, up to 34 and 37 million).
Lucy, you make a good point, and in fact teachers are leaving the industry. In fact, more than one academic has bemoaned the fact that many of the best and brightest are ignoring the sciences and going into marketing and business studies.
What's good about that?
Which leads me to rehctub's rather startling comment: “Remember, we are all presented with that same opportunity.”
Really? All schools are the same, all parents are the same, all students have the same abilities and talents, and have the same opportunities to express and develop those talents?
Bull.
On a global note, out of 6.8 billion people on the planet, almost 3 billion live on less than $2.50 a day, while 250 people (or so) manage to survive on more than $3 billion.

Going back to my comment about the forced amalgamation of councils in Qld, it's a sad fact of life that the one's who most need to go on strike for better pay simply can't afford to do so. In fact, the lowest paid are reluctant to even take an hour off for a stop work meeting much less strike, so tightly governed are their budgets. As has been pointed out, it was the highest paid workers, (miners, painters and dockers, etc) who most commonly took industrial action, simply because they could afford to do so. Lower paid workers could use the wage levels of these workers to argue to the Wages and Arbitration Commission for comparative increases, -before the introduction of enterprise bargaining.
Strangely, while those on the high side of the gap managed to knock this mechanism on the head -for workers- it is just this mechanism they use themselves. Politicians justify their pay increases by comparing their jobs to those in the private sector, and CEO's justify their claims by pointing to each other.
No one compares their income to the median wage, for some reason.
I predict the greater size of council's will lead to higher wage claims by Mayors and councillors, leading to comparative wage claims by state and federal Rep's and Senators... If it hasn't already begun.

jiplug
So far as my skills are concerned, I started as an industrial chemist and ended up as a programmer. I wrote in 5 languages and used 4 operating systems. I have worked on greenfield sites, and did everything from factory supervision to driving fork-lifts to TA work.

I have also done cleaning work, and I have emptied the bins in offices and I know just how much junk food office workers eat. I have also cleaned the staff toilets in a number of schools, and I have seen the notes that teachers attach to the toilet walls.

Australia may have a new economy shortly.

"the state of the mathematical sciences and related quantitative disciplines in Australia has deteriorated to a dangerous level, and continues to deteriorate."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/equation-for-maths-warns-of-disaster/story-e6frgcjx-1225838873328

We will just have to bring in more immigrants from other countries to increase our skills, and sell more real estate.

Grim,

There is no real inconsistency between my data and yours, except that yours are less up-to-date. The ABS survey data for 2002 gave a similar median income to the one you cite. There is also a nice time series of mean and median incomes here – not so hard to find, though the median numbers are updated less often than the averages.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/6310.0Aug%202008?OpenDocument

The gap between median and mean incomes is not necessarily a predictor of income inequality. For example, if the pay of the lowest-paid 25% of workers was cut by half, the average wage would fall but the median would be unaffected, so the gap between the two would narrow, even though income inequality was worse.

"The gap between median and mean incomes is not necessarily a predictor of income inequality. For example, if the pay of the lowest-paid 25% of workers was cut by half, the average wage would fall but the median would be unaffected, so the gap between the two would narrow, even though income inequality was worse."

From what I remember about economics, one of the best measures a of inequality in a country was the Gini coefficient. Basically, it demonstrated that in a "perfectly equal" country, the lowest 10% of paid workers would earn 10% of the countries total income, the bottom 20%, 20% of the total income etc etc. When this is graphed with %pop vs %total income a straight line should result. Any deviation from this line represents inequality. Thus in a highly inequitable country the lowest paid 10% of workers may only account for 1% of total income, and the bottom 20% may account for 5% of total income etc, resulting in a curve dropping below the straight line. Countries are often ranked by their Gini coefficient ro measure inequality.

Ozzie
I agree, the Gini coefficient is one of several measures of inequality regularly used by economists and social scientists. The ratio of mean to median earnings is not.

Grim
Conspiracy theories aside, I suspect the reason why the median wage is only calculated every year or two while the average is estimated quarterly is that the averages are a heck of a lot quicker and easier to calculate. You only need to know the total wage bill and number of employees, and adding in new information is simple. For the median, you need to know and rank individual wage rates.