As we head down the Howard Governments lets all be happy workers strategy, the reality is not so great for the working underclass which keeps Australia ticking around. The Age reports the following sad news.
New research shows that the working poor have increased as a percentage of the Australian workforce, with more employed people unable to afford basic necessities such as dental care and petrol.
Two studies presented yesterday at RMIT as part of the Low Pay Project — funded by the Australian Research Council, trade unions and the Brotherhood of St Laurence — found the number of working Australians who make less than two-thirds of median earnings (or less than $533 a week and $27,716 a year) has increased by as much as 600,000 over the past decade.
Dr Barbara Pocock, from the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, said the number of low-paid workers in Australia had risen 50 per cent to 1.8 million in 2003 from 1.2 million in the mid-1990s.
Dr John Buchanan, from the Workplace Research Centre at Sydney University, used data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to show that 27.6 per cent of workers were earning less than two-thirds of median weekly earnings in 2005, up from 24.4 per cent in 1990.
He said economic growth had directly contributed to the growing number of working poor because there was greater demand for low-skilled workers, particularly in the hospit- ality, retail and health and community services sectors.
Dr Pocock's team surveyed 41 cleaners and child-care workers and found many could not afford to pay for dentist visits or children's school excursions and sporting activities while juggling essentials such as bills, rents or mortgages.
She said the feelings of social isolation and humiliation experienced by low-paid workers had increased as the gap between poor and rich widened. She said one obvious example was the average pay of chief executives, which in 2005 was 63 times higher than that of average workers compared with 18 times in 1989-90.
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