The New Wealth: for some, not for all

By Greg Combet, ACTU Secretary

How is it that Australia has evolved into a less fair and equal society when we've just clocked up more than a decade of economic growth and record productivity?

If popular television is any reflection of how we perceive ourselves, our New Wealth has turned us into a nation of home renovators and landscape gardeners with plenty of disposable income to spend at Bunnings or on weekends away.

This is one version of modern Australia, possibly fuelled by the top 40% of workers who enjoyed real wage growth throughout the 1990s.

Then there's the other Australia where income levels for 60% of us stood still or went backwards. This version is not glamourised by tv, because there's not much to glamourise.

This Australia is inhabited by 2 million casual workers, the majority employed part-time. They are invisible, uncelebrated and yet to experience the arrival of the New Wealth. In their world disposable income is spent only on the basics of life.

One million of them earn less than $15 an hour. Most, including a million women, have no right to any sort of paid leave.

Even more staggering, 200,000 of these workers have no right to a holiday or sick day, despite having served the same employer for more than ten years.

You will find them all around you: in call centres, factories, universities, cafes, airports, newsrooms, wineries, Starbucks and Bunnings.

They're not renovating their homes to capitalise on the property boom. People without job security don't have access to housing loans. Paying the rent is hard enough, let alone an upfront doctor's fee.

The nation's New Wealth is built on the backs of these low-paid, disenfranchised Australians. In the drive to stay competitive, we have failed to protect them with a decent set of employee rights.

At a time of record growth, these workers ought to be at the heart of a national debate about living and working standards.

We have to ask how and why our policies have failed to include them in a share of the prosperity. Should we lazily accept that decent working standards and a vibrant economy are incompatible goals? Do Australians still value the ethos of "the fair go" or have some given in to a new selfishness?

If we don't address these questions now, Australia runs the risk of entrenching a third-rate working culture for generations to come. When the economy begins to slow, we will have missed our moment.

Far from a debate, we have a federal government encouraging employers to dragoon more people into poor-quality work arrangements.

The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics say casual numbers have swelled by 43% since 1998 and if the trend continues, one in three workers will be casual by 2010, one in two by 2050.

Unstable, low-paid under-employment is only half the story in the modern Australian workforce.

Many lucky enough to be in full-time jobs are experiencing the grind of hours so long, they'd be illegal in Europe.

These people are being stretched further and further to cover the gaps left by their out-sourced, casualised or redundant colleagues. Despite that, 60% are not paid for their extra efforts.

Ironically, mothers and fathers flat out working to finance family life often don't have time to live it with their children. Twenty years ago, there was one home-maker in 51% of two parent families. That's now fallen to 31%.

In most Australian families, both parents work. Staying at home with the kids is something of a status symbol. It takes at least one and a half jobs to pay for a mortgage, healthcare, education and day care. If the Howard Government has its way, these essentials will cost even more.

Through necessity and greater opportunity, more women are working than at any other time in Australia's history, but they are also copping the worst conditions our modern economy can offer.

The main reason 40% of working mothers have no leave entitlements is because they occupy most of the low-paid, casual jobs.

In most cases, working hours are flexible - for employers, that is. They dictate the terms and working mothers are easily penalised. Knock back work to look after children or elderly relatives and you'll be overlooked for future shifts.

For women who can't even access sick leave, paid maternity leave must seem a complete fantasy.

Women in OECD and many developing nations enjoy this right, while Australia sits on a par with Eritrea, Azerbaijan and Swaziland in its refusal to introduce a universal scheme.

While under-work, over-work and unstable work have become the norm, the workforce's super-rich, top layer is pocketing 30 times the average wage.

With profits down, Commonwealth Bank CEO David Murray recently accepted a $174,000 pay rise while sacking 3700 staff.

Executive tenure at the top of the tree can be as short-lived as a casual job at the bottom, but with bonuses, pay-outs and share options, a sacked CEO can chose to live in luxury and never work again - for several lifetimes.

This overpaid executive class includes the same people who oppose the ACTU's minimum wages case year after year, begrudging the low-paid even the smallest rise.

Australia has arrived at a critical point. If we believe in a fairer nation where prosperity is shared by the many, not just the few, we must act now.

Our first task is to reset the balance - by creating employee rights to underpin the changing labour market.

We can start by giving casuals the right to convert to permanent status after 6 months' regular work with the same employer, implementing paid maternity leave and flexible hours, establishing the right for new mothers to return to part-time work, increasing the minimum wage to $13 an hour and increasing employer super contributions to 10%.

A change in direction is required, but it is a matter of choice - it won't happen by chance.

October 2003 contents