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Issue No. 127 | 08 March 2002 |
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Power Plays
Interview: Still Flying Women: Suffrage or Suffering Industrial: No Coco Pops For Brenda Unions: Back to the Heartland Activists: Getting to the Point International: Push Polling Economics: Debt Defaulters Poetry: Those Were the Days Review: Black Hawk Dud Satire: Fox-Lew Launch Rescue Bid for Beta Video
The Soapbox The Locker Room Week in Review Tool Shed
 How to Beat the BanksCollins Goes Cahill
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Industrial No Coco Pops For Brenda
*********** Every week Brenda Redmond strategises over pennies. After paying the mortgage, for food, telephone, travel, lunches and all the other unavoidable day to day expenses Brenda, a shop assistant at Dimmeys is left with $50 per week. 'I try to save this for unexpected situations like dental bills and for general living expenses,' she says. 'From Christmas to April, all the various bills are due and I am screwed down to every cent. I get by but it leaves nothing extra.' 'When my oven broke down I got a new one from son as a Christmas present. Normally I would have had to wait for 6 months to build up the money. On my wage you just can't go out and buy anything spontaneously except if it's on hire purchase. Then you get in trouble with credit cards. If I need something right now, I have to resort to credit, but I make sure it's only for bits and pieces.' Still Reeling From the GST Slug Brenda is one of 1.7 million low paid wage workers who rely on Living Wage increases to keep their heads above water financially. This, Brenda says has become increasingly difficult since the introduction of the GST. 'The GST has made a difference - on the utilities particularly. You do notice it, a $20-25 increase on the utilities bill and on food it's about $8 a week.' ACTU Secretary Greg Combet says the living situation of Brenda and thousands of Australians like her contradicts the pathetic claims of the Howard Government in their submissions to this year's Living Wage case. 'The Federal Government has argued that any pay rise for the lowest paid in our community should be capped at just $10 a week. Mr Abbott's rationale for this mean spirited offer is his claim that a family on the Federal Minimum wage with two children is $40 per week better off after the Government's GST tax package,' he says. 'That is simply wrong. Mr Abbott's figures do not take any account of the price rises caused by the GST or the fact that the so-called tax cuts were really just a hand-back of bracket creep.' Once bracket creep and price rises are taken into account, the ACTU calculates that a single person on the Federal Minimum Wage was $14.42 per week worse off after the Government's tax changes. A single income couple with two children under 12 years of age earning $25,000 per annum (just above the Federal Minimum Wage) were $7.77 per week worse off. 'Mr Abbott has also misrepresented the value to workers of the ACTU's Living Wage claim. A single worker on the Federal Minimum Wage would receive $17.50 after tax if the ACTU's $25 Living Wage Claim were granted in full,' says Greg Combet. 'By comparison, under Mr Abbott's proposal a worker earning just $26,500 per year would get nothing. Life for the low-paid is already tough. The hypocrisy of Tony Abbott who recently received a $120 per week pay rise arguing that a $10 increase for the lowest paid is all we can afford adds insult to injury.' A Bleak Future Without A Decent Pay Rise Brenda says if her salary wasn't increasing every year through the Living Wage life would be increasingly bleak for her and her family. 'The annual Living Wage increase is just a nibble, it's a small break which then catches up with you over the next twelve months with inflation. Before when I did the shopping I was at least able to bring home chocolate teddy biscuits, milo, coco pops. I couldn't do that now, it would have to be for a special occasion.' 'My niece is living with me at the moment. She has finished her traineeship but is now back on the dole. The bills will go up. The phone bill, heating, and the food bill will go up. But I want her to have social contacts, I want her to be comfortable.'
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