Business don't need evidence

So, here's more 'hand-wringing' on wages. All sorts of sensible, believable, assertions made. Many can (even you or I could via ABS or RBA data) be supported by real actual evidence (is that a tautology? :-P).

The thing is that it's fairly easy to point out that unproven propaganda by business, sadly often 'parroted' by governments particularly those of a right-leaning, is unrelenting. It takes the form of: "because of {insert latest media trending story here} wages cannot rise".

Let's do some examples which illustrate the point:

• Government: because of the deficit we can't increase public sector wages

• Business: because of government regulation on super increases wages can't rise

• Business: because inflation is so low workers can't justify wage demands

• Business: because inflation is so high we can't risk getting into a wage-price spiral

• Business: because all our other costs are rising (freight, energy etc) we can't afford wage rises

So government and/or business relentlessly feed the press stories, or reasons, they claim are justifications for not raising wages. And on anecdotal evidence it appears we, institutions, and government have 'swallowed' their propaganda for nearly 20 years. And do they ever provide one shred of evidence to support their claims - nope, propaganda doesn't require evidence, it simply requires repetition. They say it over and over and over again (business, and various other, lobby groups with very deep pockets for advertising budgets) until it becomes a 'fait acclompi' - that, for them, is mission accomplished.

People need to start dealing with facts. Any delay to wage rises never get caught up later, so governments with deficits denying wage rises are simply ripping off employees. Businesses don't delay wage rises they simply run a "wages rises can't be justified/afforded" campaign continuously no matter what the circumstances, essentially denying that there should ever be any pay rises.

I was a confident enough salary earner that I often used changing jobs to increase earnings (as is pointed out in the article), and I was also not shy about making a case for 'extra increments' when 'in job' based on performance or project success - but I'm guessing I'm the exception not the norm.

It's clear that strengthening the 'employees voice' is critical now. It's been eroded to nearly nothing over a long period of time. I don't know what form that takes. I suspect that the unions 'brand' may have been sufficiently vilified and/or tainted that they may no longer be 'fit for purpose'. What the alternative is I'm not sure - but the 'landscape' is screaming for proper worker representation.

buggered if I know :-P