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Minister Gillard on the Minimum Wage Question

By Brian Boyd VTHC Secretary
10 November 2008

 

Back on the 30th October 2008, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard addressed the Australian Fair Pay Commission’s Minimum Wage Research Forum Dinner in Melbourne.

 

Early in her speech Minister Gillard went back into the nation’s industrial past and commented on how the famous Harvester decision of 1907 began the tradition of Minimum wage setting.   She briefly outlined how Justice Higgins of the then, just three years old, Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration determined that a basic wage, that’s a fair and reasonable wage, should be set after hearing about a dispute occurring at the agricultural equipment manufacturer H.V. Mc Kay of Sunshine.

 

Minister Gillard reminded her audience that one of the things overlooked with respect to Harvester Judgement is that the legislation that related to this judgement was actually ruled  invalid by the High Court, soon after.

 

Quite correctly the Minister then went on to say that the judgement was “so significant… the [minimum wage] concept …. endured”, adding: “The Harvester judgement established once and for all the basic premise that Australia’s workers must have a fair and decent basic wage if our country is to grow and prosper and share that prosperity.   “Justice Higgins decision was therefore instrumental in bringing to bear our core value as a nation - that of ‘the fair go’’ to Australia’s minimum wage setting tradition”.

 

Minister Gillard however doesn’t say why the essence of the Harvester judgement “endured” and why it “established” once and for all the concept of “a fair and decent basic wage”.

 

It was because the trade union movement, though organised collective labour took it up across many industries over a substantial period of time and won it.   The employers   pushed back hard all the way.   It was the employers who were behind the High Court case that overturned the original case.   It didn’t endure because it was ‘fair’ intrinsically.   It didn’t fall from the sky.   It became part of Australia’s industrial reality because it was fought for and slowly but surely employers conceded it as unions became more organised.

 

In the rest of her speech the AFPC is painted as having “copped a lot of flak” because it was a creature of the infamous WorkChoices legislation and it had been given the responsibility for minimum wage setting.   Because WorkChoices gutted the AIRC the AFPC and its head Professor Harper were “caught in the middle of a political maelstrom”.

 

There was no recognition however of how Professor Harper delayed and delayed (never mind short changed) his minimum pay rates decisions, during his tenure.   He carried out the basic task John Howard gave him, to weaken the safety net under Australia’s less paid workers.

 

Minister Gillard then said the minimum wage question now has to move on.   It is “time for a change”.

 

Minimum wage setting was described as "legalistic and adversarial" in the past, even before WorkChoices

 

The Minister unabashedly used the language of the conservatives by having a swipe at the "industrial relations club” for this history.   Such descriptions it is well remembered were used by Howard and his IR Ministers for years, in order to justify gutting workers rights.

 

She promoted the government’s new policy as an “evolution of minimum wage – setting” for the 21st century, linking the new safety net (NES) to the award modernisation process.   "Employees and employers"... will have a "single point of reference" via an FWA Minimum Wages Panel.   This will establish the new minimum rates.

 

There was no mention at all of the role of unions in the speech.   No mention of collective bargaining. And no reference back to the Harvester Case and the dispute it arose from, which created the minimum pay rates concept.

 

With respect to how the Minimum Wages Panel will work in practice it is implied that in the 21st Century employers will, out of the goodness of their hearts, turn up and assist in its deliberations in a ‘non-adversarial’ manner.

 

Similarly, workers will turn up from many industries ‘spontaneously’ and put their ‘two-bobs worth’.   Everything will be sweetness and light, with no   ‘adversarial’ scenarios before the Panel!

 

Which employers are going to give all of these low paid employees time off to turn up and put their case?   Who is going to pay for it?   There are many workplaces that still rely on regularly defined and enhanced minima to ensure some basic standard of living.

 

It will be interesting to see how this new way forward unfolds.