Last week, the chair of the Australian Trade Union Council, Sally McManus, invoked the IR version of “OK Boomer” when she accused Lowe, with glasses and soft speech, of “living in the land of Boomer fantasy” “. It prompted Lowe to express concern that too high wage growth would further fuel inflation.
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After years of hiding in the shadow of Workchoices, labor relations are back, girl.
At 50, McManus is a member of Generation X, historically the classic middle son of generational wars. In general, its members do not want to draw attention to themselves.
But apparently McManus was outraged by Lowe’s speech, in which he said he wanted wage growth to be limited to around 3.5 percent, as an “anchor point.”
“If wage increases become commonplace between 4 and 5 percent, it will be harder to bring inflation back to 2.5 percent,” Lowe said.
Earlier, he said he expects inflation to reach 7% this year, so he basically says he wants real wages to fall back (albeit at a slower pace than they currently are). He is concerned (like the new Labor government) about the prospect of a wage-price spiral, although all sides agree that inflation is currently driven by external and global factors, not by rising wages.
Enter McManus, who hinted that Lowe had lost touch with reality. “All of this is just a fantasy because they don’t understand what’s really going on at the negotiating table,” he told ABC RN. The wage price index was not even close to 3.5 percent, “and less than 5%, and less than 7%.”
“And so to think in some way that the system will offer general wage increases of 5 or 7 percent is a Boomer fantasy land,” he said. “Not realizing that the whole system would be unable to do that. We don’t have centralized negotiation in this country. It wouldn’t be possible for that to happen.”
It’s hard to imagine Australia’s labor relations system offering the kind of wage rupture that fueled the “stagflation” of the 1970s because most of the workforce isn’t covered by centralized wage setting. In the 1970s, more than half of the workforce was unionized, now it is more than 14%.
Therefore, the idea that large-scale widespread wage increases will fuel spiraling prices is unlikely, although formal adjudication wage increases are likely to be a kind of unofficial reference for other workers.
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McManus also told RN that the Reserve Bank board “does not involve anyone in wage negotiations or in the wage-setting system by workers.” Unionists have been excluded from the RBA board since John Howard was prime minister.
The new Labor government is stuck in the middle.
While it strongly encouraged the Fair Labor Commission to deliver on its recent decision (the FWC raised the wages of lower-paid workers by between 4.6% and 5.2%), it has stopped here.
Boomers are so often to blame for the inequalities in our society that I begin to feel sorry for them (and for Phil Lowe, their problems are extremely revolting). Defamation of boomers is reductive and ignores the central truth of many boomers ’lives: that they took advantage of free education to get out of the working class, worked hard to create wealth out of nothing, and earmarked income for housing.
Defamation of boomers also distracts from genuine economic inequality: no one could suggest that a 22-year-old disability care worker and a 22-year-old banker have much economic interest in common, just because they are of the same generation.
But the boomers were also lucky, and that luck has continued in the form of successive governments too afraid to end it.
The older generation owes to the younger generations the fact of allowing the withdrawal of generous retirement tax benefits and tax incentives for real estate investment, and directing serious political capital to the stubborn problems of accessibility to real estate. housing and climate change.
Then maybe the jokes will relax. Okay, Boomer?