r/AusFinance • u/Massive-Wallaby4911 • 1d ago
It feels like every industry is constantly on the brink of protesting over wage negotiations, has this always been a thing?
This question is to those of you that have done a few more rotations around the sun. I've been in the work force for only15 or so years but it feels like for as long as I've been working, every industry has been having issues with pay raises. Teachers, APS Workers, Nurses, Construction workers.
Obviously negotiation is always involved with awards, but it makes me wonder if larger raises were the norm say 20+ years ago?
What was income growth like 20 years ago compared to what we have today? Is it essentially just the same?
I am just curious.
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u/Dav2310675 1d ago
20 years ago I was getting much higher wage increases (State Govt, and I was an RN back then).
Waaaayyyyy back when I was a kid, there were a lot of strikes to get better wages. That led to Keating and Hawke bringing about the Accords which helped stop the industrial turmoil.
Since then, we've had union power eroded (and yes, I'm a 30+ year union member). And here we are.
I don't want to see us go through the IR landscape of the 1970s again (brownouts anyone?). But if workers are going to get higher wages, it's probably a case of going back to the future and getting involved in unions again.
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u/Terrible-Bar-6397 19h ago
White collar professions got flooded with new entrants which lowered wages, this didn't happen to trades where the govt stoked demand for their services. White collar competes internationally and is getting wrecked, trades barely compete locally.
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u/MentalStatusCode410 1d ago edited 1d ago
K-shaped economies are non-random - there's a cause.
Compare wage growth of APS and Health sectors against executive/ministerial salaries over the last decade - also inequitable ballooning of perks/deductibles.
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u/ChilledNanners 1d ago
Those pesky unions asking for fair wages are the worst.
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u/Mushie101 1d ago
Unions at the heart are a good idea. Its just when it becomes full of corruption that the problems start, and it creates a bad name for all unions. - CFMEU for example.
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u/arachnobravia 1h ago
A few bad organisations give unions a bad name. It's a shame because unions are the primary reason we have many of the important conditions around.
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u/optimistic_agnostic 21h ago
CFMEU - members, reps and organisation are actually a cancer. It’s fucked what they do to the union movement.
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u/ThrowReasonOut 1d ago
It's primarily because inflation of the last six years has been excessively high, and it's starting to have a real effect on the ground in everyone's lives by eating away at the purchase power of ordinary people.
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u/PNAHC_Height_7376 1d ago
Could it be because there are a lot of industries, and a lot of states, and each of them expire at different times, so there's always a negotiation happening somewhere in the country?
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u/Vegetable-Low-9981 1d ago
If I compare now to the 80s. The money I give my kids for a lunch order is 10-12 times more than I received back then. The cost of the house we lived in is 10-12 times higher now than it was then.
If I compare the salary my father received then, the salary for that same job now, it’s about 3 times higher.
Income growth is much slower relative to inflation.
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u/Terrible-Bar-6397 1d ago
White collar workers never recovered from the GFC tbh, then they flooded Australia with white collar workers to lower wages.
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u/BonusLumpyYa 22h ago
All the latest employees at our asx top 15 company are now on a contacts - not full time - on a TFR & can’t join the union and have no rights and are from the sub continent.
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u/AutomaticFeed1774 1d ago
yeah. teachers always used to protest/strike 30 years ago, then there was the warfies... that was fun.
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u/prettyboiclique 1d ago
Longest teachers strike in Aus and it was resolved within a day after the (now Maritime Union of Australia) sympathy striked :)
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u/mute_axolotl 1d ago
Which is why Fraser banned secondary boycotts in 1977.
Teachers go on strike and the government saves on wages. Wharfies go on strike and the economy shuts down.
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u/Spirited_Shower_5817 1d ago
When the french go on strike everyone does. Crazy that governments can ban it, it's literally the only power we have.
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u/MrBonkMeister 23h ago
Yep. I’ve pointed that out before when train workers in NSW were banned from striking a fair few years ago. Crickets from the usual ‘muh freedumb’ crowd. Funny how people who don’t appreciate what constitutional rights afford you are silent when the government decides to kick you in the ass.
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u/mute_axolotl 22h ago
Governments can ban it, but it requires people to obey (they can’t jail everyone, right?)
I image the unions probably fought hard against Fraser’s attempts, but when Hawke was elected the union leadership rolled over, ostensibly in exchange for Medicare etc.
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u/UpstairsArmadillo454 21h ago
Now it’s the workers vs private foreign owned equity who lose little when the uprising happens to only 1 company.
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u/Inevitable-Tie-6182 19h ago
You haven’t seen proper strikes. We had no power for over a week in the 80’s when the Qld government wouldn’t agree to electrical workers demands. As kids we liked it. Not sure parents did.
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u/Massive-Wallaby4911 1d ago
What was the point of this comment, honestly?
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23h ago
[deleted]
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u/Massive-Wallaby4911 23h ago
The mental state one must have to leave sarcastic comments on strangers on the internet as a hobby.... Do what makes you happy I guess.
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u/Illustrious-Mud-2998 1d ago
We have inflation at risk of running away for various reasons.
That greats an ugly model where cost of living is going up, so workers want more money, but the government doesn't want to doll out more, because that will create a vicious spiral of making inflation worse... Also because most of them have done a crap job at budgeting in recent years. That applies to 3 of the 4 roles you've listed (teachers, APS workers, nurses)
for the 4th, Construction, Government has just changed tax policy to shift investor money away from residential construction. While this is an excellent idea for a number of reasons, short-mid term it creates a scenario where materials are going up in price (inflation), cost of living is going up (workers want more wages), but the saleable product, housing, is going down in value. Given it's an industry with fairly thin margins, that's also... not good.
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u/Wiggly-Pig 1d ago
That's a sign the problem of high interest rates is real and needs to be brought down.
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u/DragonLass-AUS 1d ago
When corporations keep making record profits but underpaying their workers, it's time to rally. Unemployment is still low, so workers currently have hand. Unemployment has remained been low since post-Covid.
In the 90s and early 2000s, there was higher unemployment, so industrial action on wages was more subdued. As such, so was wage growth.
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u/IceDonkey9036 22h ago edited 20h ago
Want higher wages? Join your union. Without a unionised workforce, wages stagnate. It's always been the case. The unions are the only people pressuring for wages and conditions. I have no idea why someone would not want to be in a union.
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u/SuperannuationLawyer 1d ago
It’s been the main thing that has shaped Australia’s labour market, employee protections and safety net since Federation (arguably before it).
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u/petergaskin814 1d ago
I think things have settled a lot with Modern Awards. Modern Awards tend to reduce negotiations.
EBAs and EAs increase negotiations as every 2 to 3 years there are major negotiations.
The 70s and 80s were a free for all compared to today
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u/Anachronism59 1d ago
Ah the memories of annual holiday fuel rationing due to tanker driver strikes.
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u/sharkfinnpapa 21h ago
With inflation and the tax brackets not being tied to it... a raise aint worth what it used to be
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u/arachnobravia 1h ago
Enterprise bargaining has always gone hand-in-hand with industrial action.
Management will always put forward the worst and lowest offers, workers will always need to protest for anything reasonable. Complacency gets you nothing but the wage stagnation and profit inflation we've seen since the union busting began decades ago.
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u/Crazy_Treat_8805 1d ago
Very common when Labor is in. Unions threaten chaos leading up to elections
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u/MathematicianFar6725 9h ago edited 9h ago
Well just look at those FIFO electricians that were striking recently, demanding "fair" pay when they are easily clearing 250k already.
If their pay isn't fair then what are the rest of us even working for. And yes I'm FIFO too.
There's literally no reason not to strike and complain as much as possible. No one just going to say their salary is fair as is.
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u/Smooth_Staff_3831 1d ago
Greedy unions are getting more greedy..
And the average poor Joe on an award gets a pitiful raise each year.
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u/Soggy_Jackfruit_232 1d ago
Sorry, are you trying to tell me that unions are pocketing the wage increases? How the hell can you be so propagandised that you can hold those two concepts in your head at the same time?
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u/Nottheadviceyaafter 1d ago
Fuck mate the 70s to 90s makes today look tame as fuck........ when wages actually grew, when the middle class grew.......