Guest Report

Why Rural Australia Deserves a Pay Rise

By Tony Sheldon - State Secretary, Transport Workers Union

For the past 150 years the people of rural and regional Australia have formed the backbone of this Nation. It has been the hard work of the farmers, miners, assistants, drivers and shop owners in towns like Wagga Wagga, Griffith, and Cootamundra that have made Australia what it is today.

It is the camaraderie, the sense of community, and the willingness to help your neighbour in a time of need that defines what it means to be an Australian. No where is the essence of Australia best illustrated in the capacity of rural Australian communities to survive all manner of natural disasters.

In recent times, however, the people of regional Australia have been neglected. Pursing alternative policies and agendas' the Federal Government has forgotten about those it is supposed to represent. The hard working people of rural and regional Australia are most being effected by this Government's failure to perform.

Instead of focusing on delivering to the people most at need the Government seems to be blindly seeking to transform Australian society into something like the low wage, corporate driven, highly divisive and fragmented society of the United States. In terms of industrial relations policy Mr Peter Reith's second wave of changes proposes to introduce laws stripping away the fundamental rights and protection of working people that American and previous British governments' have already introduced.

If successfully implemented the Government's agenda will fundamentally alter the Australian social, political and industrial landscape. It will change irrevocably what it means to be an Australian.

Most critically, it is the hard working people of rural and regional Australia who will be most effected by these transformations. It is these people and their importance to Australia's economy, history and culture that the present government is trying to get the rest of us to forget.

Autralia's Forgotten People

Across Australia these transformations are already well under way. In New South Wales business and employment growth, investment and infrastructure development are becoming increasingly condensed within the greater Sydney metropolitan area.

Increasingly the families of rural and regional Australia are being left behind.

Over the past ten years the household incomes for workers and families in rural areas have fallen, on average, more than 10% behind comparable incomes of families living in greater metropolitan Sydney.

For the Wagga Wagga and Murrumbridgee areas alone the figures are staggering.

In 1996 the average weekly income for households in the Wagga Wagga and Murrumbridgee area fell 33% behind the equivalent rate for the Sydney metropolitan area. Over the same period the average weekly personal income for individuals in the Murrumbridgee area fell 22% below the equivalent rate for individual incomes in Sydney.

Unemployment figures over the same period reflect a similar disparity. The employment rate for the greater Sydney area is currently at an all time low of 5.7%. For the Hunter region unemployment is at 10%. For Newcastle, 10.3% and for the Illawarra 9.1%. In Wagga Wagga and the Murrumbridgee areas while the figure for men is 6.2%, for working women the unemployment is currently at 9%.

This is just no good enough. There is no legitimate reason why the people and families living in rural and regional Australia deserve anything less than those living in metropolitan Sydney. Rural people work just as hard as their city counterparts.

In fact like all Australian people, in recent years they are working longer and harder than ever before. In the last 20 years the proportion of Australian's working over 40 hours a week has doubled from 19% to 32% of the workforce. Overwhelmingly the majority of these hours are worked in the agriculture, mining and transport industries.

In the interstate and long distance sectors of the transport industry for example drivers are regularly being forced to work in excess of 100 hours per week. Often these hours are worked continually. In one case, recently brought to my attention a driver spent over 78 hours straight behind the wheel.

The only reason long distance truck drivers and the people and families of rural Australia have fallen behind their counterparts in metropolitan Sydney is because the Federal Government continues to neglect their interests. The current Government sees no place for ordinary hard working people and their families in their vision of Australia for the 21st century.

In addition to failing to do anything to address the imbalance in wages and conditions between rural and metropolitan Australia, the Government continues to fail to provide rural workers with adequate training and career opportunities, as a means of rebuilding the area and encouraging young people to stay at home.

Compounding the declining income differential's of rural Australian's, the government is doing nothing to prevent the tide of backpackers and tourists stealing Australian jobs. Despite rural unemployment rates the Howard Government has increased the cap on the Working Holiday Visa Program for 1997-98 to 55,000. This is increase of 40% since 1994-95 when the figure was just 33,000.

Similarly, the Government refuses to enforce Better Rates and Better Safety for transport workers in the interstate and long distance sector. Rather than agree to introduce and enforce uniform safety standards which will save the lives of truck drivers and all Australian road users, the Government is forcing the industry to be more competitive by introducing national competition standards.

These consistent failings of the Government to respond to the needs and interests of ordinary hard working Australian's cannot be better illustrated by the Minister for Workplace Relations, Mr Peter, Reith's, refusal to immediately act to protect the legal entitlements of Australian workers.

It was only after the public outrage over the disgraceful treatment of the Oakdale miners that the government finally agreed to act to secure their legal entitlements. Now, however, after agreeing to the see the miner's entitlements paid from their superannuation fund it appears Peter Reith is trying to squib on the Government's commitment to introduce legislation to protect the entitlements of all workers. The Government's proposal to tie the legislation to the second wave of industrial relations changes is nothing more than a mean spirited political attempt to stick the knife deeper into Australian workers.

The job and financial security of rural workers and their families are far more insecure than those of their counterparts in the city, and still the government refuses to act. The Woodlawn miners are stilled owed some $6.5 million. Just this week I've learnt of a trucking company on the Central Coast owing their employee's over $200,000 in outstanding annual leave, long service leave, and redundancy pay. This has got the stop.

The Federal Government must be made to listen to the voice of the people of Australia it was elected to represent and immediately introduce legislation to protect the legal entitlements of Australia's workers.

In forcing the government to see sense the Oakdale miners have demonstrated to all of us that if we are prepared to force the issue and mobilise community support then they may well be prepared to listen.

Fortunately, this means that the Government's transformation of Australian society is not yet complete. For those of us who are prepared to stand up and make ourselves heard this means we still have a voice in choosing to shape the Australia we live in the in 21st Century.

The Government's fixation with adopting American and British examples can in no way be allowed to diminish the importance of hard working people to Australia's economy and society.

The American's and the British know nothing of what it really means to live in a community striving for common goals where everyone is looking out for everyone else.

The difference in what it really means to be an Australian, when compared to the British or American cannot be better illustrated by a true story about the survival rate of Australian soldiers in Japanese Prisoner of War camps I've often heard Michael Crosby of TUTA tell.

Researching the mortality rates of prisoners', academics discovered that in comparison to British and American's the mortality rates of Australian prisoners was remarkably low. Seeking to explain this anomaly the researchers discovered the determining factor was how the soldiers from each country organised and responded to their situation as a group.

The American's it was revealed set up a market economy trading in rice. The result, American soldiers competed with each other over the barter and exchange of goods. The British maintained a traditional class system. The Officers' formed a select group monopolising the scarce resources and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

In comparison, the Australian soldiers set up a cooperative. All the soldiers in the camp pooled their resources and supplies and each soldier was then allocated supplies on the basis of their individual needs. In this way the Australian soldiers made sure no one was left behind. By helping each other individual Australian soldiers were helping themselves. Which is why, the researchers concluded, more Australian POW's made it out of Japanese camps than British or Americans.

It is these characteristics of community and camaraderie, that form a central feature of what it means to be an Australian, and despite the Government's best efforts, what it should mean to be an Australian well into the next century.

As the backbone of the Australian community and Australian values, ensuring the sustainable future of the workers and families in rural and regional Australia is the key to securing this objective. This is why the People of Rural Australia Deserve a Pay Rise.

We can no longer afford to let the Government continue to neglect the needs and interests of rural Australian's. The imbalance in living standards and weekly and household incomes between rural and metropolitan Australia must be addressed.

The Government cannot avoid this issue for any longer.

As the Oakdale miners have demonstrated the key to success is to be prepared to support the issue and to mobilise community support. To this end, as part of our new organising campaign to have 30,000 rank and file organisers across NSW in the next 12 months, the Transport Workers Union has established a Rural Organising Committee.

We are committed to ensure the hard working people and families of rural and regional Australia receive the justice, pay equity and protection of their entitlements that they deserve. We are also want to see the people and families of rural Australia continuing to play a critical role in defining Australia's economy and society.

To secure our success we need your help.

Anyone interested in participating in the Organising Committee should contact the TWU on (02) 9912 0700.

Address By Tony Sheldon. State Secretary of the Transport Workers Union of Australia, NSW Branch

Wagga Wagga, Saturday 28th August, 1999

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 30 contents

»	Ramos Horta Calls for Workers� Support
»	Sydney Unionists Forced to Leave Dili
»	TWU Questions Timor Action
»	SOCOG Called to Cancel Indonesian Contracts
»	Union Busters To Go Cyber
»	Not-So Aussie Post for Sydney 2000
»	Horror Tales - the Nights of the Living Dead
»	Asbestos Sufferer Bequests $30,000 To Union
»	Woodlawn Workers Edge Towards Justice
»	Telstra Shareholders Asked to Block Union-Busters
»	Reith Letter to be Revealed in Conspiracy Case
»	Shock: Tele Thumbs Up For New Years Eve Holiday
»	Tales From the Picket Line

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	League's Working Class Takeover
»	Proverb for the Cyber Age
»	Postcard from the Emu
»	Mind Your Language
»	The Other Young Speaker
»	Timor: A Call to Action
»	A Letter to Downer

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