“Since 2011, real wages have risen annually by an average of 0.5% in the NSW public sector compared to 0.3% in the NSW private sector,” he said.
“We are looking at public sector wages and there will soon be more to say with the NSW budget to be delivered on June 21.”
NSW Union Secretary Mark Morey said workers struggling to get back into collective bargaining were not just motivated by money.
“It’s about retaining staff and getting staff from other states. Anecdotally through our members, we know that workers are moving to Melbourne and Brisbane, they all suffer from the same problem,” he said.
“The wage cap for the last ten years is a really strong instrument. We have lost ten years of productivity gains that could have been shared between the workforce and the government.”
Sydney nurse Julia Farley, who is a delegate for the RPA union of the Nurses and Midwives Association, said the wage cap in the context of the pandemic meant she and her colleagues were considering their future in NSW.
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“I could move to Queensland and have better working conditions and better wages. Why should I stay?” she said. “I want to stay in NSW. I just hope the government gives us something that will compensate us fairly and keep us here.”
Armidale School Counselor Michael Sciffer said he knew six local teachers who had left the profession in the past 18 months: “I feel like we’re taken for granted. The cost is we’re losing teachers with a lot of experience.” .
NSW Labor leader Chris Minns said the state needed to move towards a productivity-based bargaining system, arguing that the government should work with front-line workers to provide better public services. .
Peetz told the Herald that wage caps have played an important role in setting wage standards nationwide.
“NSW is pretty central to that. He was one of the first, if not the first, to do that kind of thing,” he said.
“I suspect that if NSW had a major policy change here it would also have some impact on the behavior of state governments and would also have an impact on wage rules.”
The Perrottet government has faced a growing wave of industrial unrest this year by teachers, nurses, paramedics and transport workers.
The Public Services Association is the latest to threaten measures, with a 24-hour strike plan on Wednesday, without being willing to wait for the June 21 budget.
Employee Relations Minister Damien Tudehope called the move “premature and unnecessary.”
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On Friday, the Albanian government fulfilled its election promise to demand a 5.1% wage increase, as well as inflation, in its submission to the Fair Work Minimum Wage Review.
It recommends that the commission ensure that “the real wages of low-paid workers in Australia do not fall back”.
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