The ACTU will launch its Living Wage 2000 campaign next week which will seek increases in Award rates of pay for low paid workers. We'll finalise the claim at the ACTU executive meeting next week. In November unions will take the claim out to members and delegates, explain it and discuss it. Then we'll follow up with an application to the commission in November,' he says. This change from the top down, file it and arbitrate approach to one encouraging members to be part of the process builds on a successful rally outside the Commission on the last day of hearings last year.
People understand the issues.
Low paid workers are hurting. The tax system is unfair. Fair dinkum, that disappears in the first visit to the petrol pump,' he says. The bad news in the CPI figure for working families, whose budgets are already stretched to the limit, is that the full impact of the GST on prices is yet to be felt. Mr Combet also said that Treasurer Peter Costello had directly contradicted himself when he claimed in a radio interview this week that low paid workers are 'better off' under the GST and that the July 1 tax cuts 'more than compensates for price rises'.