Our Work Matters

29 November 2017

The Catholic Church in Australia today continues the mission of Christ to humanity. This includes its organisations which minister to the poor and the sick; to the elderly and those struggling to find work; to indigenous people and the homeless.

There are organisations ministering to immigrants and refugees; those needing school and tertiary education; those addicted to drugs and their families; those preparing for marriage and those needing marriage counselling; those needing the range of pastoral care services and those needing ‘time out’ from the stresses of today’s pressures.
In earlier times, many of these works were pioneered by religious sisters and brothers, as well as by priests. Religious communities came from Europe to respond to requests to provide for needs ranging from care for orphans and the poor who needed education to nursing injured and typhoid-stricken miners on the gold fields. Australian communities were founded by such luminaries as St Mary of the Cross MacKillop and Sister Scholastica Gibbons.

Today, the Catholic Church across Australia represents 22% of the population, and the Church is one of the largest employers in the land. Until now, while we knew that Catholic organisations employed many people, we did not know the precise number.  As surprising as it may seem, Catholic organisations have evolved and thrived without ever knowing what their overall contribution was to employment in Australia or what the exact demographic make-up of the Catholic workforce actually was. There was little consolidated data about the people doing the work, where they worked or how they were paid.

It was from this foundation that the Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations (ACCER), the employment relations advisory body to the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, commissioned the first comprehensive survey of Catholic employment in Australia.  With the survey completed, we can now say with confidence that the Church’s more than 3,000 organisations employ around 220,000 people, with more than 77% of them being women. These people serve, care for or educate millions of Australians every day. Their number makes us one of the largest single group of employers in Australia—bigger than Woolworths and bigger than the four biggest banks in Australia combined.

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Working Australia, 2017: wages, families and poverty

27 July 2017

Working Australia, 2017: wages, families and poverty is the latest edition in the Working Australia series of annual ebooks published by the Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations (ACCER).

Most of Working Australia 2017 is taken from ACCER's submissions to the recently concluded Annual Wage Review conducted by the Fair Work Commission (FWC). The book also includes a review of the FWC's June 2017 decision and a section on Catholic social teaching on work, economic relations and the rights of workers

The Working Australia series is intend to be of use to those who are interested in wages policy and a range of associated public policy issues; and to Catholics who are interested in the practical application of an important part of Catholic social doctrine. The books have been written in a way that requires no special knowledge of the issues, features and history of Australian minimum wage setting.

Minimum wage setting is one of the most important areas of Australian public policy. Decisions made in the annual wage reviews have an immediate impact on the lives of the lowest paid workers and their families and a wider impact on Australian society.

ACCER's objective in annual wage reviews has been to increase minimum wages so that Australian workers are guaranteed a living wage and one that keeps them out of poverty and provides them with a decent standard of living by reference to contemporary Australian living standards.

ACCER's main message about the minimum wages system is that the wages safety net is failing to keep workers and their families out of poverty and provide them with a decent standard of living. The book argues that the 2017 decision, like earlier decisions, failed to target poverty and provide sufficient assistance to the neediest sections of the Australian workforce.

The Harvester minimum wage case and its importance to Australian society after 110 years

29 May 2017

ACCER marks the 110th anniversary this year of the historic Harvester test case, which led to the introduction of Australia’s first minimum wage.

In this decision in 1907, Justice Higgins of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration used the Sunshine Harvester company as a test case to determine that 7 shillings a day (or £2.2s for a 6 day week) was a fair and reasonable wage for an unskilled labourer, which was higher than the wages Sunshine Harvester was paying their employees at the time.

Justice Higgins’ ruling became the basis for setting Australia’s Basic Wage until the 1960s and the principles from that historic decision continue to influence the setting of Australia's current National Minimum Wage.

Part of ACCER's submission to the current annual Wage Review, and a further commentary on Harvester are in the article  The Harvester minimum wage case and its importance to Australian society after 110 years