Public sector unions in Victoria have seized on Labor’s NSW election win to push for the Andrews government to scrap its wage cap, calling it an ‘embarrassment’ for the state.
Victorian public sector unions have seized on Labor’s NSW election win to push for the Andrews government to scrap its wage cap, calling it “an embarrassment” for the state.– the lowest in the country – by the May budget but ruled out removing it or tying it to inflation due to a potential wage-price spiral.
However, while supportive of reviewing the cap, she was “wary of tying a cap to inflation which would also apply when the CPI is low”.Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O’Neil said governments could not ask essential workers to risk their lives in a crisis and then not provide pay increases in line with inflation.
The Andrews government reduced its wage cap from 2 per cent to 1.5 per cent last year but is likely to raise it before new negotiations at the end of the year in light of rocketing inflation.“We are not simply going to get caught in a process of matching whatever CPI is otherwise we will get caught in a wage-price spiral,” he said in parliament last month.
It also allowed the government to present only modest rises in labour expenses in the forward estimates. Its 2022 budget forecast total employee expenses would rise only about 1.5 per cent a year from 2023 to 2026, from $34.2 billion to $35.4 billion.But while the government avoided unresolved wage disputes and negotiating pay at a time of record inflation, anger among union members over locking in low-wage outcomes has boiled over.
One Victorian union official said whatever the next wage cap was “we can’t sell a sub-4 per cent outcome to members”.this week it was monitoring potential knock-on effects from the NSW election on the Victorian wage cap.
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