Millions of Australian workers will get a 3.5 per cent pay rise from July 1, following the Fair Work Commission’s annual review of the minimum wage and award agreements. Source: ABC News.
The commission’s decision increases the national minimum wage to $24.95 per hour or $948 per week, based on a full-time, 38-hour working week.
Inflation is currently at 2.4 per cent annually.
While the national minimum wage covers a small proportion of the workforce, about a fifth of all employees in Australia are paid at a minimum award rate.
Workers reliant on award wages are disproportionately female and more than half are employed casually, while two-thirds work part-time hours and more than a third are low paid.
This means the wages paid to award workers only make up 10.5 per cent of the national “wage bill”, the FWC noted.
Award workers are concentrated in the accommodation and food services, health care and social assistance, retail trade, and administrative and support services sectors.
The above-inflation wages rise addresses some of the decline in real wages experienced by minimum wage and award wage workers in recent years.
“The principal decision which has guided our decision is the fact that, since July 2021, the real value of modern award wages … has declined by 4.5 percentage points relative to inflation,” the review read.
The FWC said at its last three annual decisions, it put off taking action to reverse the decline in real wages “out of a concern that this might result in the further persistence of higher inflation”.
“The result has been that living standards for employees dependent on modern award wages have been squeezed and the low paid have experienced greater difficulty in meeting their everyday needs.”
It said with inflation now back within the Reserve Bank’s 2-3 per cent target range, it has now taken the opportunity to go some of the way to correcting the decline in real wages.
The federal Government had argued for an “economically sustainable real wage increase” – while not putting a firm figure on its request, it indicated support for a wage rise above inflation.
In its submission to the annual wage review, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference called for a 4.5 per cent rise in the national minimum wage.
FULL STORY
Millions of workers to get 3.5 per cent pay rise after Fair Work Commission annual ruling (By Stephanie Chalmers and Emilia Terzon, ABC News)
Minimum wage rise needed to keep Australians out of poverty (ACBC Media Blog)
RELATED COVERAGE
3.5 per cent minimum wage rise is good news for workers, but social justice demands more (By Tom Barnes ABC News)
Millions of Australian workers to get an above-inflation pay rise as minimum wage lifts by 3.5% (The Guardian)
