Last week, property developer and rich lister, Tim Gurner, was lambasted across the globe for telling the AFR Property Summit that he wants the unemployment rate to rise 40% to 50%, and for wages to fall, so that Australian workers are grateful for having a job.
“We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40% to 50% in my view”.
“We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around”.
“There has been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around”.
“We’ve gotta kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurting the economy”.
Gurner’s remarks came amid the steepest decline in real wages on record while company profits and CEO pay boomed over the pandemic, driven in part by generous taxpayer handouts:
On Monday, The Australian reported analysis of executive remuneration data from more than 70 large Australian companies.
The data shows that about 30 CEOs received a double-digit pay rise in 2022-23, with five of the CEOs paid more than $10 million in total during the financial year, while 19 received more than $5 million.
GPT Group’s CEO Bob Johnston emphasised that Australian companies need to pay their leaders competitive salaries to ensure they are not poached by offshore rivals:
“I would have thought Australia needs to have competitive salaries to keep the talent in Australia”, he said.
“Any pay structure has to be approved by the shareholders”.
Not bad work if you can get it in a country where productivity is terrible and innovation barely exists.
Do as we say, not do as we do.
