11 April 2018

The Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations has told the Fair Work Commission that the minimum wage is “manifestly inadequate” and hundreds of thousands of families are living in or threatened by poverty.

The ACCER has told the Fair Work Commission that its view on wage levels is based on Catholic social teaching, which holds that workers “have the right to wages that will support themselves and their families at a decent standard of living”. 

It has argued that this right is an internationally recognised human right and that it is also recognised in the minimum wages provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009, under which the national minimum wage and award minimum wage rates are set.

The national minimum wage, as it is currently set, is not delivering that standard of living and low-income families are suffering as a result, ACCER explained. Evidence presented in the ACCER submission shows that a full-time job on the national minimum wage in the average two-parent family with children leaves the family in poverty and that the average sole-parent family is left even worse off, because most sole parents have to work part-time.  

“The level and depth of child poverty in working families is scandalous,” the ACCER submission says.

Read the full submission:  ACCER Post Budget Submission to the Annual Wage Review 2017-18

The Australian Catholic Bishops Confrenece issued a media release expressing the views of the ACCER.