Unions, Greens and left in general will never be satisfied with how much of other people's money they can get their hands on, even while they decry profits that provide them with that money through jobs. And they don't care how much their greed stops employers from taking on people who just want to work for their future and for their self-respect. The ACTU and unions are Crime Inc., doing nothing for workers that can't be provided by the law of the land.

ttbh says, "Unions, Greens and left in general will never be satisfied with how much of other people's money they can get their hands on,... "

Well correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't he receive a handout from the government himself? Isn't he a recipient of an old age pension entitlement and thus gets his hands on other people's money?

This article is a re-hash of similar erroneous claims about Australia's wage structures. Firstly, on the subject of youth unemployment being double that of the national average, if the author had looked at the World Bank and other international data collection bodies, he would have found that this is common across all nations in the world. Secondly, the Australian wage is set by a Commission which takes into account all economic factors and has been doing that since 1922. So the drivel about wages being an inhibitor to business growth is just tripe! Lastly, there was such a thing as equity and fairness in Australia, so that an employee should be entitled to a wage, which increases in line with the productivity and changes in business profits.

erroneous claims
Cyclone,
Absolutely nothing erroneous about the labor costs here being too high !
Also, the Old Age Pension is no handout, it was paid for in our working lives & we still pay taxes to keep the likes of you & Paul1405 with everything we buy !
So, get a life & pay your share for when your time comes !

It's not a high minimum wage that threatens small businesses across this wide brown land ut the exorbitant cost of energy, transport, water and gas, etc, etc!

And indeed the costs that governments add on as well as the usual horde of profit demanding, paper shuffling parasitic middlemen!

A modern fit for purpose rail freight rollout would also assist as would reducing the debt burden and associated costs.

Then there's the cost of government and a horrendous tax burden that could be made massively cheaper with two outcomes! The jettisoning of all state governments and equally massive tax reform that is made manifest as an unavoidable flat tax of just 15% and then, only kicking in above a very generous tax-free threshold!

Many businesses would do much better as co-ops rather than the most expensive businesses, i.e., franchises where all the cream goes to the (the world owes me a living) parasitic franchiser/money-hungry landlord!?

With all the above combining in any way, the only way a majority of these businesses can survive, is if the majority of their staff, live below the poverty line!

All these outcomes need to be laid at the feet of those that create them but are quarantined from any consequences, i.e., pompous, pulpit pounding, popinjay politicians?
Alan B.

thinkabit,

You never come up with an argument; you just play the man.

I'm not going to argue with you, because it is a waste of time. But, if the unions keep bleeding small business - the greatest employers of Australian labour, then a lot more people looking for work won't find it. Employers are already hesitant to put people on, thanks to the high minimum wage and low return from people wanting more but not putting anything in. People in trades, for instance, are choosing to just work for themselves with the help of family; large employers are sending their work off to China. As soon as the government is able to restart mass immigration, there will be plenty of people prepared to work for less. When push comes to shove, labour is just another resource, and its high time spoilt Australian workers started to appreciate what they have, and what they are going to lose if they keep demanding more - especially when they are not very productive.

ttbn. THINK! If those small businesses were co-ops no union could affect them! And if all small businesses were co-ops including whafies etc? They never ever would ever again and with that cooperative capitalist system installed we'd get the double whammy of eliminating the profit demanding paper shuffling middleman and one dollar made to do the work of seven in the local economy, via the usual ecnomic flow on factors!

Think a bit more and understand if you're still able/ WHEN THE ENERGY BILL IS HIGHER THAN THE WAGES BILL? THE ENTERPRISES ARE ROOTED!TBC
Alan B.

AlanB,

"Think a bit more and understand if you're still able".

Thanks for the insult. You save others from pointing about what an old fool you are.

Treasury is already talking about a 235,000 influx of immigrants per year after covid (whatever that is), so greedy, lazy Australians might not have jobs or wages to moan about for much longer.

The name suits; Well written by a Toff. Obviously one by name and nature.

Dan

Very sensible article. It is the most basic rule of economics that if you increase the price of something (labour) you will decrease the demand for it. The price of this policy falls on the young and the unskilled. If the mandated price of labour is less than the productivity that can be extracted from that labour then the person will not have a job. What employer would take on someone at a loss? Young people tend to have few skills. However, once they have a job they will soon develop valuable skills and will no longer need to work for minimum wage. If they don't get that initial opportunity they will remain welfare dependent their entire lives. The vast majority of the population earn much more than the minimum wage, yet we all started on it. Get rid entirely and we'll all be better off.

I think there is a civil rights argument for getting rid of the minimum wage too. The government does not own me and should not be able to prevent me from working simply because I don't have the necessary skills to be worth the minimum wage. It's all right for lawyers working for unions to make these claims but what about the disabled person who is kept out of the workplace because they are not productive enough to be worth $20/hour? Or the retired person who is no longer fully productive but still might be worth $15/hour to an employer. Should they be denied the opportunity and benefits of paid employment and the dignity it creates?

"A high underutilisation rate of 38 percent in 2019 for 15 to 24-year olds reflect the negative effects caused by higher minimum wages."

Bullcrap from foreign tossers.

The reason why there's such a high underutilisation rate for 15 - 24 year olds, is because manufacturing jobs died, and the only jobs young people can get are in fast food outlets, cafe's and childcare.

When I was a kid, you'd just walk around the industrial area asking for a job, and soon enough someone would say yes.
This is now a thing of the past.

"The best way to help workers is to increase productivity. This means cutting the corporate tax rate to incentivise business investment, reforming other parts of our archaic industrial relations system, and slashing red tape to relieve the regulatory burden and encourage innovation, particularly for small businesses and startups."

The top-down approach is flawed.
If you combine this approach equally with a bottom-up approach,
then you'll find the right path somewhere in the middle ground.

I've shared my bottom up approach numerous times.
I'm not going over it again unless someone asks.

THE ENERGY BILL IS HIGHER THAN THE WAGES BILL?
Alan B,
That's because of the high wages in the Energy industry !

The very moment some wage goes up other costs go up also. We could still have all the manufacturing had it not been for the greed of the Unions who btw are always in bed with overpaid Bureaucrats who give the thumbs-up to wage claims.
Lower wages & there'll be lower costs & more jobs !
Stop paying insane salaries to people who couldn't possibly earn them by merit !

Another economic rationalist banging on with a thinly disguised worshipping of the market to fix all ills.

His first link to any evidence was this statement “One of the more recent studies undercutting support for increasing the minimum wage was a 2015 analysis from the Productivity Commission.” containing a url to this paper:

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/workplace-relations/technical-supplements/minimum-wage-employment-supplement.pdf

But the authors of that paper where quite clear in saying:

“The bottom line of this study is that the effects of minimum wage changes are ambiguous over the relevant period”

How on earth is this undercutting anything?

I am disinclined to go through the rest of the evidence unless someone says there is more substantive stuff included.

The claim “Australia has one of the highest minimum wages in the world.” is trite. We have one of the highest cost of living in the world including the highest property prices.

There is chronic over egging of the argument through out but it is pretty superficial none-the-less. There is not a single mention of inflation which this increase not cover. Further there is no mention of the tax cuts (business welfare in some respects) which have allowed the FWC to refrain from granting the full amount inflation dictated.

This is puerile whinging about a modest increase in the wages of the lowest sector of our economy.

As an average, the cost of labor remains at 16% while company tax is still above 35%.

The highest tax as actual money any corporation pays to the ATO is still not much more than 13% and anyone who is earning a real quid can so arrange their financial affairs so as to not pay more than 15%.

Moreover, some corporations earning billions may not pay in actual dollars transferred to consolidated revenue, more than 4%? While a reported 40% pay none at all to anyone!?

ttbn, how did I insult you? That's just more of your hurling insults where you have no rational argument or factual debate? The info flys over your head without parting your hair?

Then it's always you that seek shelter in hurling abuse! Get over yourself!

There has been little enough upward movement in wages in recent years to keep growing the domestic economy! WHICH COULD STAGNATE AND GRIND TO A DISASTROUS HALT WHEN THE DEBT NEEDS TO BE REPAID!

ttbn was right when in another discussion he had identified low costing energy as promoting industrial and economic growth in this country! And could again! The lowest cost energy is free energy! And we could create almost free energy if we became a repository for the world's nuclear waste, and be paid annual millions for providing the service!

Then with a number of newly created, government-funded co-ops build myriad co-op-owned and operated MSR's and use that waste in those very safe and rad-free reactors, where it's hundreds of years worth of free fuel!

Then transmit the energy created directly into neighboring industrial estates across this wide brown land via superconductor graphene to manufacture all manner of very low-cost goods! Pump water vast distances! And become the energy component of most transport and distribution!

This very paradigm eliminates unions given it makes them entirely redundant and ensures that the parasitic, profit-demanding, paper-shuffling middlemen are also eliminated, thereby, more than halving the cost of living and doing business! And a win/win all around! And if any of those (parasite) caps fit you ttbn? Wear them!
Alan B.

Low wages are a thinly disguised means for Government to hold down inflation.

The higher the inflation rate, the more difficult to control inflation.

Low wage earners are by that token, subsidised from the welfare budget which is collected in taxes from those individuals and industries most capable of supporting that innovation.

This is the point of conflict over minimum wages, not the furphy that increasing wages will impact negatively on employment; which it may do to a lesser degree than its counterpart inflation.

So now we have a different argument. Increasing minimum wages is not the bogey it’s made out to be here, since an increase in low wages can be easily offset with adjustments to welfare benefits.

It’s all of it, a slight of hand, when in addition to fooling low paid workers into believing the Government is onside, (meaning votes for largesse for politicians), who, as pointed out by a poster, can also be manipulated with immigration levels which force down wages.

Dan

Of course high wages contribute to unemployment. They also cause us to be seen to over value ourselves, driving down the exchange rate, making every thing we buy dearer, & our exports less valuable

The lower exchange rates make the high wage less useful, & it becomes a viscous circle, costing industries & jobs.

A simple example.
In the 70s I was contracted to localise the production of a range of mostly solid brass water & energy equipment. The stuff was imported from the US, & was expensive. I went mostly for people with CNC machines keeping labour costs down. It took 7 months to get the higher use stuff produced here successfully.

Fast forward to the early 90s & I was asked to take over the management of the company now in trouble. Production cost were far too high to compete with stuff almost as good being copied in Asia.

It was not so much the machining & manufacture of the products, but raw material costs. Local brass was 3.5 times the price of brass in Taiwan, produced from our copper & zinc exports. This was due to labour costs & excessive costly regulation here.

I could buy from Taiwan equal quality items complete chrome plated, & assembled with copper flow control valves & rubber washers delivered into my store for less than the brass rod to machine the parts from here. The cost of heavy industry in Oz is ridiculous, mainly due to high wages & the so called unfair dismissal law.

The unfair dismissal law as it now stands is disastrous, particularly for young hopefuls. No small company can afford dead heads or bludgers in todays business.

Up north in the tourist industry you could depend on your staff to get rid of the undesirable bludgers that came along. They didn't appreciate being bludged on, probably as most are working pretty hard already.

In the factory, warehouse or office situation it can be different. The less useful can hang around a long time if allowed, & it costs a small fortune to get rid of them.

Thus after a careful selection you would hire a youngster on a 3 month trial, hoping you had chosen well from an often large number of applications. At the end of 3 months many had not made it to really useful, it is a pretty stiff learning curve for a youngster. Without unfair dismissal you would probably give them another couple of months to see if they would get there, but you just can't afford to when it is so hard to get rid of them if they don't.

A lot of kids who may have made it given more time are pushed back out onto the street due to this excessive regulation. It costs a lot of time & money to run through 40 odd applications. The last thing you want to do is go back to it again. But you have no choice if the new chum is of doubtful usefulness after a 3 month trial, due totally to this law.

This damn fool law does damage to many more youngsters than it helps.

Your a dreamer hasbeen.

The success level of Asian manufacturing, is not predicated on labour as you erroneously believe. That is a small component overall. Of course in labour intense industries, they are more subject to labour costs, but it is comparatively smaller due to a larger population of unemployed poor. Naturally that large component of aspirational poor, are a great assistance to productive industry.

Fortunately, this country attends to poverty in a more humane manner, as opposed to communist dictatorships.
That’s because of unions and their focus of worker welfare through fair wages. A Christian ethic built into our culture, also emphasises consideration of the poor as an ethic of value.

It’s better to acknowledge the input to our industrial decline, as one of competitive Capitalism clambering over itself in order to exploit an impoverished country too willing to submit itself to the plunder of greed, ensuring its own greedy success.

Hopefully we can stay distanced from the Middle Ages and oppose the feudalistic
among us, by raising the minimum wage to a reasonable level for the lowest paid of the workforce that makes your coffee and cake at the local cafe.

Think of them when you install your free taxpayer subsidised solar panels.

Dan

Hasbeen

Just now read your second post. Your attitude to the workforce is not only beyond belief but so stupidly out of touch.

Let’s run through the pay rates of the workforce in my area of life.
I’m still engaged in it, and won’t consider anything under a hundred dollars an hour.
My local mechanic is cheap at a hundred and ten an hour.
I overheard a conversation at the dentist surgery a few weeks ago, and was able to calculate an average dentists ability to make in the vicinity of a million a year for an average effort.
The local lawnmower man cruises in around eighty an hour if he’s organised.

And here you bitch loud and long over the lowest paid on, what is it, $17 per hour.

Get over yourself.

Dan

while company tax is still above 35%.
Alan b,
What, before the NG claims get into gear I suppose & after that it's what, 3 % if that ?
Companies make profits so, what's wrong with paying tax ? Where are the company managers hiding their profits ?
A Flat Tax, nothing less, will make the playing field more level !

Mr Toff and his race to the bottom free market. During the pandemic who have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of government "socialist" welfare, big business. Crown Casino with its James Packer pocketed $64 million in government 'Jobkeeper', Gerry Harvey's billion dollar business empire pocketed $12 million, paying big bonuses to executives and share holders, while returning record profits. Airlines that are profiteering with $38,000 tickets, were at the same time paid hundred of millions of taxpayer money.

As for the minimum wage, how many small businesses are paying $10/hour cash in hand, while at the same time pocketing GST, working the cash economy, and making bogus tax claims.

We have millionaire asset holders receiving aged welfare for life, around $25 billion/year. Very generous governments payments to these people who failed to make provision for their retirement, this sees some living very high on the hog, driving new cars and watching big screen TV's etc etc.

Try reading my post again Diver.

I did say it was the cost of brass feed stock that destroyed any chance of local production.

It is the wage cost in the heavily unionised heavy industry that is the problem, not at the bottom end in the small factory/workshop.

I have never employed people on award wages. If they are not worth more than the award I don't want them. I used to run wage rate challenges. I would set a higher turnover I wanted/needed to achieve. If it was achieved for 3 consecutive months everyone in the company got a 5% wage rise. It was a poor year if we didn't get 3 rises, & staff tended to stick around.

A good company is one where the staff talk about "US" rather than "THEM"

A good company is one where the staff talk about "US" rather than "THEM"
Hasbeen,
If only the Public Service crowd would share that mentality !

Wages are very high but the real nail in the coffin are the sub contractors. They charge like wounded bulls, have no outlays apart from tools, write everything off & have no responsibility !