Unions are using the end of the jobkeeper payment to urge the government to lift the minimum wage, saying low-income earners will spend the money and help stimulate economic recovery.
Calling the end of the government wage subsidy a “grim” day for workers, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said she was concerned about the effect of withdrawing the pandemic support measure, with up to 150,000 people expected to lose their employment as a result.
“Until the pandemic is past there is still a need to support businesses that have been affected through no fault of their own,” McManus told the ABC.
“The pandemic is still with us and will still be with us until the vaccine is rolled out in our country and around the world.”
She also urged the clawing back of the wage subsidy from employers who have profited from the scheme, saying it could be redirected to workers who lost their jobs.
“It is absolutely immoral that they have taken that money and pocketed it for bonuses or for profits,” McManus said.
“If they gave that money back, that money could be diverted to those companies, those workers, who will lose their jobs because jobkeeper has been withdrawn.”
McManus said a lift in the minimum wage of $26 a week from 1 July would also help recovery from the pandemic-induced economic downturn, calling it a “small amount” for employers to be able to afford.
“One thing we absolutely know is that people on the minimum wage, on the lowest wages, they spend every single cent that they earn, so it is a very effective way of ensuring that local businesses, small businesses, are getting customers through the door,” she said.
“The worst thing we can do in terms of a recovery is not have consumer confidence or consumer spending because that is what will keep small businesses alive, so if we’re going to have a V shape to recovery for jobs and for profits, we have got to have it for wages as well.”
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, called for the jobkeeper payment to remain in place, saying many businesses would be left without income as a result.
“If the logic of why these payments were in place is still there today, why would you just remove that support?” Albanese said.
“What we’d like to see is targeted support, so that where businesses were in circumstances, which justified … wage subsidies, to keep that relationship going between employers and workers, then that would be able to be continued.”
The treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the jobkeeper payment had achieved its objectives of “saving lives and saving livelihoods”, with 3.8 million Australians in a job at the height of the pandemic.
He said 2.8m people had “graduated” from the program, and now the government was focusing economic support in other forms, including the aviation and arts packages.
“There is no doubt that there are some businesses that will continue to do it tough once jobkeeper ends, but as a program, it was always a temporary one,” Frydenberg said.
He said the program needed to end as keeping it in place could impede worker mobility during an economic recovery, and pledged further support measures would be unveiled in next months’s budget.
“There are a lot of people and a lot of sectors across the economy and the regions that are continuing to do it tough and just as the Morrison government had their back at the start of this crisis, through this crisis, we will have their back right to the end of this crisis,” he said.
“There is a lot of support, money that is flowing out every day into the pockets of households and to the balance sheets of businesses to drive economic activity.”