But when Josh Frydenberg did just that in a speech to an employer group on Monday,it was seen as business as usual. He got some friendly headlines and his declaration vanished quickly in the maw of the daily news cycle.
Rather than urging the members of his business audience to pay their employees more if their value to the companies had increased,instead it was up to the employees to go out into the market,ditching their existing work arrangements and relationships,and having to prove themselves all over again at another business.
If he outraged people in the same way as Joe Hockey’s 2015 solution to worsening housing affordability,which was to “get a good job”,there wasn’t any evidence of it. Indeed,it could well be that many and possibly most workers are okay with his suggestion,even if they won’t take it up.
The ho-hum response to Frydenberg’s contribution tells us a good deal about one of the most profound changes in Australian society in recent decades:the active decision by the vast bulk of wage and salary earners to turn their backs on unions and to accept low levels of agency when it comes to bargaining for better pay.
The consequences of these choices extend beyond workplaces,households,and the economy into politics – especially the condition and nature of the Labor Party. From the early years after Federation right up to the 2007 election,fought over John Howard’s WorkChoices regime,wages policy was regularly front and centre of election campaigns.
The principle of workforce-wide wage justice,of a bond of mutual respect between employers and employees based on simple notions of fair dealing,still lingered in the national consciousness. That was its last gasp.