The wage price index was released yesterday. Unemployment is 3.5% which is essentially full employment so wages are rising strongly right. WRONG! Badly wrong. It was a pathetic figure given the state of the labour market. See Greg Jericho.
Why so? We have had structural problems in the labour market since it was made much more flexible by Keating and then more -de-regulated by Gillard. It is ironic Howard actually made it more regulated in his haste to weaken labour market power.
This is the essence of the problem now which it appears Phillip Lowe simply does not understand. If you weaken the trade union movement and a lot less people are trade union members then who is going to get the wage rises people should have???
People such as Steve Kates and Judith Sloan have been warning about a wages break out since Russ won the election. when the Liberals won 6 years later Eric Abetz ( the IR minister was also warning about a wages break out.
It hasn't come and will not come.
No comments:
Post a Comment