Professor Ian Harper from the University of Melbourne has downplayed the prospect of across-the-board pay rises or a ‘wage-price spiral’ in the wake of the increase in the minimum wage.
Harper, who was the inaugural chairman of the Australian Fair Pay Commission, says employers no longer face the 1970s-style indexing of pay to the consumer price index that heightened the likelihood of a wages spiral:
“Sally McManus is quite right to point that out as an experience in the past,” Harper said, following recent comments by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary that any insistence the workforce would receive pay increases above 5 per cent was “boomer fantasy land”…
