Public sector wage caps a big part of stagnation problem, sparking strikes at home and abroad

Contrary to the claims of big business and its media cheerleaders at the Australian Financial Review, Australia doesn’t have a looming wage-price spiral problem — it still has a wage-stagnation problem.

If anything, surging inflation has exacerbated it — it’s now far more appropriate to refer to Australia’s falling-real-wage problem. The days when our wages were just stagnating are now but a fond memory. 

The idea that Australian workers should meekly accept this state of affairs and cop a substantial real wage cut that would, on current forecasts, not be made up for most of the decade, if ever, has rightly been dismissed by the ACTU, and wiser heads in the commentariat like Ross