This was Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus writing on the Australian Unions website, 2 June 2023:
Today the Fair Work Commission announced that workers on the national minimum wage will receive a pay rise of 8.6 per cent. Workers on Award wages will have their pay increased by 5.75 per cent. Both of those increases will come into effect in the first pay period after 1 July 2023.
The union movement fought hard for this pay increase. Up against us were the big business lobby – who argued for a real-wage cut.
All union members should be proud of this pay rise. It’s the largest increase to minimum and Award wages in Australia’s history.
It’s what unions do – we use our strength in numbers to ensure that working peoples’ pay gets moving again.
Increasing pay is the most important step to reducing the impact of the cost-of-living crisis….
Come July 2023 the approx. 20.5 per cent of Australian employees (est. 2.75 million individuals) who are paid in accordance with minimum wage rates in modern awards and the 0.7 per cent of Australian employees (est. 180,000 individuals) paid the National Minimum Wage – workers who are also much more likely to be low paid, mostly work part-time hours, are predominantly female, almost half being casual employees and probably having no entitled to paid leave – will see more dollars in their pay packets.
According to The Guardian on 2 June 2023, the Fair Work Commission’s statement indicates the minimum wages will increase to $882.80 per week or $23.23 per hour.
This appears to translate to a new hourly rate of $23.21 for those on the National Minimum Wage.
Based on ABS labour force numbers for April 2023, it is expected that up to 21 per cent of the current 13.87 million strong national workforce may benefit from these minimum wage rate rises.
Given that an est. 54,927 employees in Northern Rivers region worked part-time by 2021 and an est. 35,028 were female, there may be quite a few local residents with a little more in their pay packets next month.
However, as most of the modern award-reliant workforce is employed under a relatively small number of modern awards covering specific industries or occupations, the effect of the Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2022-23 Decision differs markedly between industry sectors and, along with the increase in the National Minimum Wage will have a limited effect on the national wages bill.
Which is not to say that employer lobby groups will not be frequenting newspaper, radio and television platforms voicing ‘the sky is falling’ predictions over the next week.
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