Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.

Fair Pay Commission Head's Dodgy Business Past

The head of the Federal Government’s new Fair Pay Commission was a director of a company that went bust, owing its workers over $700,000.
The report on ABC’s AM program suggests the company may have been trading whilst insolvent, a serious criminal offence.
Professor Ian Harper will head the commission, which will make determinations on how much Australian workers should be paid and replaces the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The company he directed, Australian Derivatives Exchange Ltd (ADX), had failed to pay superannuation to staff for four-months before they called in administrators in March 2001. Administrators found there was an “arguable case” the directors had breached company law for trading while insolvent.
According to reports by the ABC, the company ran up debts of $3 million dollars during the three months it was insolvent.
Ian Harper’s views on minimum wages have also been questioned after the ABC’s AM program found a little known report he had authored which condemned the concept of a “fair and reasonable wage”, one of the legal benchmarks upon which minimum wages have been based. In the paper he also argued that low-skilled workers should be paid rates “commensurate with their low productivity”.
In the same piece he praised the standards and wage rates of the sweatshops of lower Manhattan in he early 1900s.
This is the man who will be deciding how much Australia’s most vulnerable workers will be paid.

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