Australia’s Labour Party backs pay increase for low wage workers

Australia’s Labour Party has backed a pay increase for low wage workers in a formal submission made to the country’s wage authority.

The Fair Work Commission will rule this month on a wage rise for the nation’s lowest-paid workers. 

Tony Burke, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, said, “The submission says this: In considering its decision on wages for this year, the government recommends that the Fair Work Commission ensures that the real wages of Australia’s low paid workers do not go backwards,” reports ABC News. 

Burke noted that companies were already paying more than the minimum wage due to labour shortages, but the wage hike submission was to ensure that workers on the minimum wage do not earn less in real terms. 

Newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged in the final weeks of his election campaign that his government would back a substantial lift in the minimum wage, and that the wage hike should be no less than the inflation rate, which was at 5.1%. 

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“Many low-paid workers are young, female, in casual employment, and are far more likely to find themselves experiencing financial hardship,” he noted in a statement.