Call for inquiry into needs of low-paid staff

Sydney
23 March 2003

Helping the world’s kids to a new start

One in five kids living in poverty

ACU model for rest to follow: Beattie

Transsexual ‘marriage’

Refugees ‘destitute’

Curtain falls on Woomera

Expo peek aids hospital

Call for inquiry into needs of low-paid staff

Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter

Pope’s 25 years in stamps

New mysteries on pocket cards

CD to help East Timorese kids

New Vinnies head wants to ensure best deal for needy

Conference celebrates the faith

Medicare principles ‘must be safeguarded’

Bougainville - after the war is over

Fast and feast in lent

Editorial: The poverty line

Letters: Tabernacle

Conversation: Dr Henry Pang, GP and aid volunteer - Dead people all around ‘changes your life’

Voice of Youth: ‘O’ - what a feeling! We’re Catholics

Plea from the bush: Come and see us

Waverley’s 100 years of ‘bright stars’

Young train as catechists

Lay ministry great, says jubilee priest

Call for inquiry into needs of low-paid staff

By Damir Govorcin

The Australian Catholic Commission for Employment Relations is seeking an urgent inquiry into the needs of low-paid employees.

In a written submission to the national wage case before the Australian Industrial Relations Commission it says there is a need to address the position of low-paid employees who do not receive fair and just wages.

The federal minimum wage of $11.35 an hour is manifestly inadequate and “must be reviewed as a matter of urgency”, it says.

The Catholic employment relations body says its submission is “underpinned by a long tradition of Catholic social teaching” on the employment relationship.

“Since the publication of the Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the Catholic Church has consistently affirmed the dignity of labour and the right of the employee to earn a just wage,” it says.

The Catholic commission’s executive officer, John Ryan, said: “Ask yourself if you can raise a family and send your children to school on that sort of wage and the answer is no.

“You are barely surviving and in today’s society I don’t think that is good enough.

“People are frightened that if they ask for more money they won’t have a job.

“What kind of society are we living in if that is the case?

“Work should provide people with dignity, but when you are receiving low wages you are just concerned about eating and fending for yourself. I don’t think that is living.”

Since 1997, Mr Ryan says, the Australian Catholic Commission for Employment Relations has presented submissions to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission calling for a change to the federal minimum wage.

“We might be banging our heads against a brick wall, but I believe this is too important to let this issue slide,” he says.

“When you are lowly paid it generally means you have low skills, thus you are caught in a vicious cycle.”

The submission supports, as an interim measure, an increase in the minimum wage of $24.60 per week or 65 cents an hour, thereby moving the minimum wage to $456 or $12 an hour.