The " Minimum Wage " enigma !

Low wage Australian workers have just been granted a raise of 41 c an hour. Predictably, the unions claim that this is not enough and industry claims that it will make manufacturing less competitive - and cause job losses.

They are probably both right.   The enigma of setting a minimum wage - as opposed to letting market forces prevail - is the difference between a civilized country and the law of the jungle.

We are surrounded by many countries where people literally starve to death if they have an infirmity that prevents them from working and earning a living.  There is no welfare safety net and vast millions live in slums - or simply exist on the streets of overcrowded cities.

This minimum wage rise of 2.6% takes the weekly pay packet to $622 and there is no doubt that any person earning wages at that ;level will have problems paying rent, gas and electricity bills - and putting food on the table.   It is a long way short of the $ 1396 that the average wage earner receives - and that increased 4.5% in the past year.

It is a fact of life that Australia has the highest minimum wage in the developed world according to OECD.   Some will claim that this is the reason we are becoming less competitive in the manufacturing sector, but it is not manufacturing that is employing minimum wage people.   The vast majority of manufacturing jobs fall into that average wage segment.

The minimum wage people are those that clean offices, do the unskilled jobs that trained people shun and are usually " on call " casuals who are desperate for more hours of work to bring wages up to survival levels.

Lifting the minimum wage was probably a wise decision.  Allowing the lowly paid to slip further down the poverty scale would have repercussions on crime levels and obvious destitution.   Employers will grumble, but they will manage to accommodate finding a few extra dollars and that 41 c an hour may be the difference between eating or going hungry for some families.

We will always have working poor who earn less than the average person because they lack the skills to get a better job.   We will remain a humane society when we ensure that the unfortunates at the bottom of the earnings ladder do not slip below the poverty line that balances welfare, jobs - and sheer survival.

The measure of a just society - is when it provides the means for those needing skills to access the learning process and gain the means to climb the ladder to escape poverty !