Millions are struggling on wages that have barely grown in years.
MOST Australians like to think we've escaped the worst of the post-global financial crisis pain. Solid GDP and growth numbers, and soaring commodity prices do suggest we stand apart.
Yet, an Auspoll survey last month turned up some breath-taking results. To the defining generational question, ''Will the future we pass on to our children and grandchildren be better than that handed to us?'' almost two thirds of a cross-section of Australians answered no.
Why the pessimism? It goes back to the observations of Nobel prize-winning economist Professor Paul Krugman who lamented that, for most Americans, ''economic growth is a spectator sport''.
In the heady days before the global financial crisis hit, Krugman warned that growth was not ''trickling down'', inequality was rising and belief in ''the great American dream'' was souring.
In Australia, too, growth has proved a spectator sport for the millions of workers left behind.
Today, my union's members are among the most poorly rewarded in the nation for their work. They are the childcare professionals we entrust with our children and the aged-care workers we rely on to preserve the dignity of our frail parents. They are the friendly faces across the bar and the anonymous teams who sweep through our offices overnight. They are the security officers who guard our airports and the hotel workers on night shift.
Together, they are among about 20 per cent of Australians who are ''low paid''; that is, earning less than two thirds of the median wage. This is no small anomaly; this is a huge group of people who work for a living, and are proud to do so - but still struggle to make ends meet.
In Australia, pay packets at the bottom end of the labour market have steadily shrunk relative to wealth gains at the top; Australia's lowest-paid workers, those on the minimum wage, have, for example, received only a 2 per cent increase in the real value of their wages over the past decade against a corresponding 16-20 per cent increase in productivity.
The average young Australian family is now living with debt equal to three times their household income.
For many of our members, their credit card has become the thin plastic line between doing the weekly groceries and doing without. More than 2 million Australians say they would be unable to cope for more than a month if they lost their job.
But there is more than low pay gnawing away at Australia's social fabric and undermining what we, ordinary people, need to feel secure.
In the past 30 years of neo-liberal market economics, we have witnessed a massive shift in risk from business and government to workers.
The International Monetary Fund has recognised the ''transfer of financial risk over a number of years'' with ''the household sector … acting more as a 'shock absorber' of last resort''. And our own Treasury considers the level of ''risk that people are required to bear'' as one of five key indicators of well-being. This shift in risk has operated like an effective but brutal pincer action. Workers have lost security of employment and income and protections such as sick leave and minimum hours. Half of Australia's large hospitality workforce, for example, has no entitlements at all, in an industry that offers Australia's thinnest average pay packets.
And services governments once delivered have been turned into commodities for sale. What happened to free healthcare and free education? And what of the escalating costs of basics such as utilities and public transport?
This silent restructuring of the economy, and the precarious existence it has imposed on many, is the big untold story of contemporary Australian life.
As a union, we recognise that we must look beyond the bargaining table and embrace a broader role as a community advocate for an alternative economic agenda. And, that's a political role.
We will, of course, continue our workplace advocacy and organisation, but we will align our political efforts with the interests of all hard-working Australians, many of whom may not be members of the unions.
The potential social and economic repercussions of today's inequality are far too important to hide behind buoyant economic data. Who will fill our malls and keep ''consumer confidence'' up, and our market economy humming over, if our workers are too insecure to spend?
Krugman has never been an opponent of free markets, but has argued that ''a market economy smoothed by a strong safety net has produced the most decent societies ever known''.
Over a century ago, Australia pioneered the legal concept of a ''living wage''. Other nations followed our lead. We use words such as fairness, equity, egalitarianism, and opportunity to describe Australian society because, historically, we have taken action to make it so. It's time to revisit these fundamentals and to ask what we need to do to secure a more equitable future.
Louise Tarrant is National Secretary of United Voice (formerly the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union). This is an edited version of her speech to the National Press Club in Canberra today.
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Millions Of Australian Are Struggling On Low Wages (Read 1754 times)
