Low Pay Commission research has found that Government policies have driven the UK minimum wage's "bite" of the median up by 9.3 percentage points, while Australia's has increased by less than 0.1 percentage points since 2015, with next month's 9.8% wage floor rise in the old country to bring the minimum up to two-thirds of the median wage.
The Minns Labor Government has introduced IR changes that "remove the power to cap wages for good" and replace it with a "mutual gains bargaining" system, while also boosting the NSW IRC's powers and restoring it as an integrated court and tribunal.
Award wage increases have responded to rather than contributed to higher price inflation, and although the tight labour market has brought higher pay growth, it is "not enough to be a threat to slowing price inflation", according to a leading labour market economist.
The RBA says several new early indicators it has developed in-house are helping it to build a "fuller view" of wage movements ahead of the release of official figures.
The Australian Public Service Commission has tabled a revised APS pay offer that lifts total increases from 10.5% over three years to 11.2% and makes a 2.29% "re-alignment payment" for employees in some agencies as part of a shift to service-wide common dates for wage rises.
The Remuneration Tribunal has awarded a 4% pay rise for federal parliamentarians and the most senior public servants after noting that increases awarded over the past decade had been "conservative", including zero in 2020 and 2021 and 2.75% last year.
Visy workers in South Australia will receive a backdated 8.6% pay boost after the FWC found that their deal's annual rise clause applied the state's CPI figure rather than the lower national inflation rate.
The AiG says the FWC should take into account the Budget's substantial cost-of-living relief for the low-paid in granting an increase no higher than 3.8% in this year's minimum wage case, while the Albanese Government says there are "no signs" of a wage-price spiral and reiterates its view that the real wages of low-paid workers should not "go backwards".
NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns has hedged over whether his pledge to scrap the State's public sector wage cap will lead to higher pay increases than those awarded under the Perrottet Government.
