Fair dinkum, Phil, what is this?
“When any of us feel like there is more competition out there you’re less inclined to put your price up,” he told the Crawford Australian Leadership Forum hosted by the Australian National University in Canberra on Monday.
“People value security and one way you can get a bit more security is not to demand a wage rise.
“Firms act like that and workers act like that,” he said, adding that shouldn’t be something workers should “get used to”.
…The real source of unhappiness, he argued, was the lack of a willingness among workers to make the case for higher wages.
He said fears around a lack of productivity growth, as technology impacts the labour market, was likely to be a temporary slowdown only.
“Productivity growth tends to come in waves, and in the optimistic interpretation we’ll see another wave some time not too far down the track.
“A second factor is that workers feel like there are more competitors out there, they’re worried about the foreigners and the robots.”
“Hopefully running for a few years now with quite tight labour markets [will be] re-energising workers to get more of the labour share.
“At some point, one imagines that’s going to lead to workers being prepared to ask for larger wage rises.
Australian workers are at the pointy end of a rampant class war that includes mass immigration, systematic visa rorting, hollowing out, wholesale support for property capital owners, de-unionisation, the rise of robots and media corruption. Yet somehow in the mind of the RBA head these structural features of the labour market are secondary to worker anxiety and timidity in the production of low income growth.
With respect, Governor, that is two centuries of economic thinking replaced by several sentences of arse-covering shit.
Even Jabba Christensen has a stronger grasp of supply and demand than does the Governor, at The Australian:
Queenslander George Christensen has defended his decision to introduce a private bill to prevent a Fair Work Commission ruling to cut Sunday rates for some workers, reports AAP.
The Nationals MP told parliament he was “breaking ranks” with the coalition by putting the bill forward.
“First and foremost, legislation concerning people’s livelihoods and their ability to put food on the table should be considered very carefully,” he told MPs.
“I believe that rank-and-file members of the Labor party and the Greens would fully support this bill, and I challenge the members opposite and those in the Senate to demonstrate that they do in fact support Australian workers,” he said. “I challenge the unions to instruct their members to support this bill, to instruct their puppets in the Labor party to support this bill.”
Workers would get pay rises if they could but are being systematically stripped of pricing power by Phil Lowe&Co.
