Miserable news on Aussie wages from industry chief

Some of Australia’s lowest paid workers have been warned not to expect a pay boost anytime soon.

A push to lift the wages of some of Australia’s lowest paid workers has been swiftly rejected by business.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Andrew McKellar on Wednesday argued that raising migrant worker wages would “kill” much of the immigration program overnight.

Both the unions and employers agree the government should lift its migration intake to 200,000 in response to the current skills crisis.

But the ACTU’s support is conditional on the salary for temporary skilled migrants being lifted to around $90,000 and be indexed annually by the wage price index.

The ACCI chief rejected the proposal on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Speaking to reporters in Canberra, Mr McKellar said wages should be left to the marketplace.

“We're seeing quite significant measures to attract people into jobs,” he said.

“The idea here that we need some sort of artificial mechanism or checkpoint before we start responding to the crisis that we have is not the right notion.

“(The ACTU) want to increase that from the current level of $53,000 a year to $90,000 a year. This would kill many areas of the immigration program overnight.”

Instead, he suggested a threshold increase to $59k would be “more realistic”.

The ACTU wants the threshold salary lifted to $90k. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

On Wednesday, the ACTU released its second discussion paper ahead of the government’s jobs and skills summit in September.

An opt-out union membership system for foreign workers and abolishing visa conditions which tie workers to a single employer are among the raft of proposals from the peak union body.

ACTU President Michele O’Neil told NCA Newswire on Wednesday she wants to see more done to stamp out migrant worker exploitation.

“What this report says is we should have sponsorship of migrant workers by industry, not by individual employers, because an employer controlling your paycheck as well as your passport is a recipe for exploitation,” she said.

– With Catie McLeod