It’s anti-worker CEOs who are ‘a risk for the nation… a risk for the economy’

Here’s a useful example of how hatred of workers is ingrained in both Australian business and the business press.

In The Australian Financial Review today, you’ll find a piece conveying the thoughts of Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott on Australian workers, claiming that wages growth is going to push interest rates up. Rising wages are “a risk for the nation, and it’s a risk for the economy”, Scott is reported as saying, because “unfortunately productivity is very weak. Unit labour costs over the last year have gone up 5.8%, so those domestic cost pressures are certainly putting pressure on prices.”

Scott’s chairman, Michael Chaney, chipped in to falsely claim that the government’s changes to casual employment laws would make it harder to employ casuals and reduce wages. As Crikey has previously noted, the business attacks on the changes proposed by Industrial Relations Minister Tony Burke, including by Wesfarmers, are based on the bizarre claim that workers will be worse off financially and businesses will also face higher costs.

Scott and Chaney’s comments were reported by the Fin with no fact-checking or analysis as to their accuracy, just reported verbatim as if they were the unimpeachable truth.

The level of wages growth in the most recent quarter for which we have data, the June quarter, shows annual growth at 3.7% for the private sector. In the year to June, inflation was 6%. That means private sector workers’ real wages fell by a whopping 2.3%. If Scott thinks that wages falling by that amount is “a risk for the nation, and it’s a risk for the economy”, then what does he think would be a safe level? A fall of 3%? 5%? More?

But, see, Rob Scott would know a thing or two about low wages. Wesfarmers is a wage thief. Its industrial group underpaid 6,000 workers by $15 million. It underpaid Target staff by $9 million. Bunnings failed to pay super worth $6 million to its staff. Wesfarmers has been doing its own little bit to make sure wages don’t grow too much.

At that time, Scott argued against harsher penalties for wage theft, saying “inadvertent administrative errors” shouldn’t be punished. But now he feels confident demanding that workers suffer even more dramatic wage cuts.

As for the lack of productivity that Scott laments, we should stick to the June quarter — which as we pointed out earlier this month saw a big drop in productivity. But in that quarter Australian workers also worked more hours than ever before in the history of the economy. Why did productivity fall? A third of it was because bad weather and maintenance schedules saw big falls in iron ore, oil and gas production. That’s not exactly in Wesfarmers’ wheelhouse, but the company owns a developing lithium miner, so you’d think Scott would be across productivity issues in mining, rather than blaming it on workers. The other big contributor to the productivity decline was slumping retail demand caused by interest rate rises, meaning all those extra hours being worked were accompanied by only a small increase in output. But, yeah, Rob, blame workers.

Wesfarmers is the West Australian School for Stupidity with some prestigious alumni. Richard Goyder was CEO before Scott, prior to his joining the Qantas board, where he has covered himself in glory ever since as Alan Joyce ran amok. Chaney, another former CEO, was chair of the National Australia Bank while the Big Four banks were engaged in a litany of sins that led to the banking royal commission — along with gigs with climate criminal Woodside and BHP. And let’s not forget Jennifer Westacott, now a director of Wesfarmers but of course best-known for her stint turning the Business Council of Australia — long more or less controlled by Wesfarmers — into Australia’s most derided lobby group.

And let’s talk about the general line from Australian business that Labor is wreaking havoc with its industrial relations changes, giving too much power to unions and workers and deterring job growth and investment. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ industrial disputes data, in the year to June — so encompassing Labor’s time in office — industrial disputes have averaged 1.4 days per 1,000 workers per quarter. How many were being lost under the Coalition? In the five years to June 2022, they averaged 2.3 days per 1,000 employees per quarter.

Even in construction — constantly portrayed by the Coalition as a lawless sector under the thumb of the bike chain-wielding thugs of the CFMMEU — days lost have averaged 2.6 per 1,000 per quarter compared to 4 in the five years to June 2022. That’s despite Murdoch drones and Michaelia “Chuckles” Cash claiming the Albanese government was “turning a blind eye” to thuggery in the sector.

You’ll search in vain in The Australian Financial Review for those figures, as well. Pathological hatred of workers runs very deep. And anything that doesn’t fit the narrative of hate tends to get ignored.