Wages decision a ‘kick in the guts’ for the most vulnerable workers

While wages are frozen, ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence has indicated that: “The costs of rent, food, medicines, education and utilities have all risen in the past year and families need a pay rise to keep up."

Unions will be hoping that the new “Fair Work Australia” body will restore some measure of wage justice when it rules on minimum wages in 2010.

A “wait and hope for the best” approach, though, is not sufficient in times such as these. Not only do unions need to campaign in earnest for a restoration in real wages: the times also demand immediate action from the government to support the disadvantaged.

In the interim period between now and the next decision on minimum wages, the Federal Government should provide further stimulus in the form of cash supplements: only this time for the most vulnerable workers.

Such stimulus should compensate these workers in full for the real wage losses that are flowing from this final act of bastardry by the Howard-era “Fair Work Commission”.

But for workers there remains the need to work - in some ways - independently of the government.

Under pressure as a consequence of anti-union populism - beat up for years by the conservatives and their allies in the corporate establishment - Labor has failed to provide for the right of workers to withdraw their labour except under the strictest of conditions.

There is no recognised right for pattern bargaining: and there is no recognised right for political strike action. Further, from the Hawke era, there is no right to “secondary boycott” industrial action in solidarity with workers who may not be as organised or positioned to enjoy bargaining power or leverage in their own right.

If the Australian Labor Party (especially the Federal Government) continually fails to respond sufficiently to the labour movement mobilisation that led to the defeat of the Howard regime, then clearly workers and their representatives need to “keep their options open”. If this means supporting the Greens, and other progressive political forces who are less equivocal in their support for worker’s rights, then at least this may put pressure on a Labor Party which takes the support of workers for granted.

But if Labor values its relationship with the union movement, immediate stimulus payments to compensate the 1.3 million who are suffering as a consequence of this cut in real wages - are a very good way to start.

Such measures could further be enhanced by a restructuring of the broader tax system in favour of low-paid workers.

On these issues the ACTU and organised labour more broadly need to remain on the front foot. Workers must organise in the immediate term to get compensation for this cut in real wages. And over the longer-term we must all stand up for a rise in the real wages of vulnerable workers - not only as tied to productivity - but as a matter of distributive justice.