While the government and many economists insist wages growth is only a hop, a skip and company tax cut away, we forget how the industrial relations landscape has changed in recent decades. Business lobby groups insist that unions still have too much power and the industrial relations system is tilted too far in their favour. Well, have a look at how the level of industrial disputation has fallen away even since the 1990s, let alone the combative 1980s.

The dramatic decline to testimony to the decline of unionism, Labor’s introduction of enterprise bargaining and an industrial relations framework that has made it increasingly difficult for workers to take industrial action — which in some cases is now simply banned if it might inconvenience anyone.

What would it be like if we had the levels of industrial disputes that we had thirty years ago now? In the three months to December, we would have had over 1100 separate industrial disputes across the country, involving over 280,000 people, involving the loss of over 600,000 working days. Even at the level of disputes of the post-enterprise bargaining reforms of the Keating years, we’d still be looking at over 100,000 workers on strike.

The most recent fall in industrial disputes comes after 2012 — which just happens to be around the same time wage stagnation set in for Australian workers. Of course, correlation isn’t causation. But maybe a few more strikes might do more to get wages moving than the Business Council’s lie about company tax cuts.