ACTU secretary Sally McManus urged the Prime Minister,who has refused to back an increase to the national minimum wage,to help prevent workers “drowning in bills.”
“Scott Morrison’s failure to act to back working people is a danger to the economy. Every dollar working people lose in real terms is a dollar not spent in local businesses,” McManus said.
The headline inflation rate for the March quarter is 5.1 per cent,and is tipped to increase again by mid-year. The Reserve Bank forecast last week that wages would continue to go back in real termsuntil December 2023,with Morrison saying it was “a reality of the global economy.”
“Cost-of-living pressures are higher because of what we’re seeing in the global economy,” Morrison said in Perth on Saturday. “That is what I have to deal with on my watch.”
McManus said low-paid Australians had already cut back on discretionary spending. “They will have no choice but to cut it completely as for so many workers – cleaners,aged care and retail workers,there is nothing left after the rent,groceries,and petrol.”
The ACTU’s revised proposal would lift the hourly rate in the minimum adult wage from $20.33 to $21.45,affecting about two million Australians who are paid the minimum wage,or whose incomes are linked to the decision by a higher industry award.