Friday lay day – the skill shortage myth in Australia

Its my Friday lay day with respect to blog writing but at the risk of today’s publication looking like an advertising catalogue, I thought I have better write something. There are a number of topics I am delving into at present so deciding what I was interested in writing about today took a little coin-tossing (in virtual space that is). So some notes on corporate greed and management lies. Familiar themes for me. In a week where we learned that wages growth in Australia is at record lows and real wages are skating along the zero growth line despite on-going productivity growth, the big business barons want the government to scrap weekend our wage system and instead allow the ‘market’ (inverted commas!) to rip. This is code for cutting wages for a range of occupations and sectors. Business is also continuing to lie about the state of the economy claiming massive skill shortages exist, which then lead them to recommend more lenient use of short-term migrant visas – which is code for bringing in non-unionised workers from abroad who will work for minimum rates and be susceptible to illegal scams that violate those minimum rates. Even the Government has noted the skills shortage argument which is part of the relentless public relations assault on workers’ conditions does not accord with the evidence. But then since when have the right-wing allowed the facts to get in the road of their ideological push to destroy unions and drive wages down as low as they can.

Read more
Back To Top