Sweet, sweet news for Australia’s lowest paid earners: the Fair Work Commission has just increased the minimum wage by $18.70 – or 3% – per week, taking it from about $622 to $640.90 and equating to an hourly rate of $16.87, or an additional 50 cents per hour.
Per The ABC, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) had previously called for a $27 a week increase to the pay packets of 1.5 million Australians; conversely, employers and business groups lobbied for a relative pittance of $8.50. The decided upon amount then equates almost to a little over the happy medium of $17.75, with the new rates coming into effect on July 1st.
Accounting for the increase in award rate wages, Fair Work Commission president Justice Iain Ross flagged “The deterioration in the relative living standards of award-reliant workers; the needs of the low-paid; the recent widespread improvement in labor productivity growth; the historically low levels of real unit labor costs; and the absence, in aggregate, of cost pressures from the labour market.”
Exactly a year ago, the Fair Work Commission increased the minimum wage by $15.80, which is barely enough for a standard adult ticket to a screening of a new release movie like A Million Ways To Die In The West, which sounds terrible, so you probably save your money anyway.
What a time to be alive!
via ABC
Photo: Treat Yo Self
