The Prices and Incomes Accord was an agreement between the
Australian Council of Trade Unions
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), originally the Australasian Council of Trade Unions, is the largest peak body representing workers in Australia. It is a national trade union centre of 46 affiliated unions and eight trades and la ...
and the
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...
government of Prime Minister
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and union organiser who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (A ...
and
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance.
Government
The treasury o ...
(later Prime Minister)
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is an Australian former politician and unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He previously serv ...
in 1983. Employers were not party to the Accord. Unions agreed to restrict wage demands and the government pledged to minimise inflation. The government was also to act on the social wage. At its broadest this concept included increased spending on education as well as welfare.
This was seen as a method to reduce inflation without reducing the living standards of Australians. At the beginning of the Accord, only one union, the
New South Wales Nurses Federation, voted against the Accord. The Accord continued for the whole period of the Labor government through seven stages including, after 1993,
enterprise bargaining
Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industr ...
.
The first Accord secured for all workers a 4.3% pay rise (September 1983), a 4.1% pay rise (April 1984), and a deferred 2.6% pay rise over the initial 3-year period, improvements in family payments and child care, and the introduction of
Medicare. Unemployment also fell from over 10% (in the 2nd quarter of 1983) to just under 8%.
[The Hawke Government: A Critical Retrospective, edited by Susan Ryan & Troy Bramston] Other achievements won by the Accord during its first three years included:
*The establishment of the Economic Planning Advisory council.
*The introduction of the Tripartite Australian manufacturing council, together with other industry councils.
*The introduction of a National Occupational Health and Safety Commission.
*Increases in family income supplements for low-income families.
*Targeted tax cuts for low-income and middle-income workers.
*The introduction of various
tax avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdict ...
measures.
*Increased pensions and unemployment benefits.
*The fastest employment and economic growth in the
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
.
*The introduction of various steel and vehicle industry plans.
*Pay rises of 3.8% (November 1985) and 2.3% (1 July 1986).
*The introduction of 3% award superannuation.
* Cut to the top personal tax rate from 60 cents to 47 cents in the dollar.
Original accord: Wages Accord (February 1983)
The original accord was designed to tackle the problem of
stagflation
In economics, stagflation or recession-inflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high or increasing, the economic growth rate slows, and unemployment remains steadily high. It presents a dilemma for economic policy, since action ...
and to reduce the number of industrial disputes. It included half-yearly wage increases indexed to the
consumer price index
A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time.
Overview
A CPI is a statistica ...
(CPI), and supported the introduction of
Medicare.
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and union organiser who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (A ...
, Prime Minister of Australia, described the Accord as a centralised system of wage fixation, for the purpose of economic recovery:
As far as wages are concerned, the Government will participate in the conference on wage fixation scheduled to be held in the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. We will base our approach to that Conference on the conclusions of the Summit and on the prices and incomes accord. In that context, I would point out again that all at the Summit agreed that if a centralised system of wage fixing is to work, there must be an abstention from sectional claims except in special and extraordinary circumstances. Let me say that my Government's interpretation of what constitutes such circumstances is the common -sense interpretation and leaves no room for selfish claims from maverick sections of the trade union movement. Participants at the Summit Conference recognised that if restraint in incomes is to be exercised, then it should be exercised universally. In that spirit of equitable sharing of the burdens of recovery the Summit also stressed the need for restraint in non-wage incomes such as dividends, professional fees and the like.
Accord Mark II (September 1985)
The accord was a reaction to the falling Australian dollar and inflation caused by higher-priced imports.
Accord Mark III (March 1987)
This represented a move from the formally indexed wage rises to a two tier system of wage fixation requiring efficiency offsets in exchange for wage increases.
Source material for accord 3
Accord Mark IV (1988)
Accord Mark IV stressed the Structural-efficiency principle. It encouraged employers to adopt new ideas like, The Establishment of Career Paths, Broadbanding, Multi-skilling and work patterns and Arrangements
Source material for accord 4
Accord Mark V (1989)
Wage increases based on implementation of changed Award wages.
Accord Mark VI (February 1990, revised November 1990)
Source material for accord 6
Accord Mark VII (October 1991)
Brought the concept of
Enterprise Bargaining
Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industr ...
.
Accord Mark VIII
Accord Mark VIII was never implemented
Source material for accord 8
End of the accords
The election of
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the s ...
in 1996 dramatically changed the ideological position of the Australian government. The Liberal government was opposed to any
wage fixing
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remunerat ...
. This government's core beliefs were that the
free market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...
should determine wages, whilst the government should focus on tight
monetary policy
Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...
and avoid budget deficit. This began a period of increased hostility between the government and the union movement in Australia and marked the end of the Accord period.
Criticism
Criticisms of the Accord come from both the right and the left. Leftist critics claim that it kept real wages stagnant for over ten years. In this view, the Accord was a policy of
class collaboration
Class collaboration is a principle of social organization based upon the belief that the division of society into a hierarchy of social classes is a positive and essential aspect of civilization.
Fascist support
Class collaboration is one of the ...
and
corporatism
Corporatism is a collectivist political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The ...
. By contrast, right-wing critics claimed that the Accord reduced the flexibility of the wages system. Supporters of the Accord, however, pointed to the significant improvements in the social security system that occurred under the ALP governments, including the introduction of rental assistance for social security recipients, extensions in child-care funding, the creation of useful labour market schemes such as NewStart and Jobs, Education and Training, the introduction of Medicare, the indexation of family allowance payments, and the introduction of the Family Income Supplement for low-income working families. Despite a fall in money wages under the ALP, the social wage of Australian workers was argued to have improved as a result of government reforms in health, social welfare, superannuation, and taxation.
In addition, the number of industrial disputes fell, while inflation was brought under control. In the lead up to the 1984 budget, unions agreed to a wage/tax trade-off in which they forwent an indexed wage increase in return for a tax cut geared towards low and middle-income earners. Job protection, family leave, and a standard 38-hour workweek had been extended to most workers, whose living standards were protected via superannuation, social wage improvements, and tax cuts. Union members (and indeed, non-union members who were nonetheless covered by union-negotiated collective agreements) and their families benefited from lower inflation, more jobs, maternity allowances, family leave, trade union education, improved access to education, Medicare, superannuation, higher pensions, occupational health and safety improvements, family income supplements, and regular real wage increases from 1991 onwards (after having fallen under Hawke). Collective bargaining rights were enhanced, while an effective minimum wages system was sustained. By 1991, the lowest paid workers received additional increases through the mechanism of supplementary payments. It is arguable that most Australians were a little better off materially on the eve of the 1991 recession than in 1983. By 1991, despite decline in real wage levels under Hawke, household real incomes rose as a result of social wage and employment changes.
Effect on employment
In 1983, the Hon
Jim Carlton
James Joseph Carlton (13 May 193524 December 2015) was an Australian businessman, politician, and humanitarian.
Early life
Carlton was born in Sydney and earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney.
Early career
Carlton’s ...
(
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
member for
Mackellar) argued that the Accord would discourage employment:
Today, in my remarks on this Bill, in particular, I speak on behalf of the unemployed. Again, as I do not represent an existing interest group dependent on government protection or largesse and am not fearful of a cessation of benefits, I do not feel obliged to congratulate the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) on his capacity to assemble and charm the group of people most likely to provide willing or conscripted endorsement of the disgraceful deal cooked up between the ALP and the Australian Council of Trade Unions before the election. This so-called accord-this deal-was and is a recipe for the continuing exclusion of 10 per cent or more of the work force from the opportunity to earn gainful reward for employment.
The Hon
Ralph Willis
Ralph Willis AO (born 14 April 1938) is a former Australian politician who served as a Cabinet Minister during the entirety of the Hawke-Keating Government from 1983 to 1996, most notably as Treasurer of Australia from 1993 to 1996 and briefl ...
,
Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations argued that things were worse under
Malcolm Fraser
John Malcolm Fraser (; 21 May 1930 – 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Fraser was raised on hi ...
:
The only policy they had for controlling wages during that period and since has been to use the bludgeon of unemployment to reduce wage claims. That was a deliberate act of policy. The former Government pursued budgetary and monetary policies designed to make it more difficult to advance wage claims. As we saw, under such policies an unemployment rate of 10 per cent was needed to bring wage claims down to their present state, one in which virtually no increases at all are taking place.
The official Australian unemployment rate did fall under the early Accord, reaching a minimum of 6% in 1990, but rapidly increased between 1990 and 1992 as part of the
early 1990s recession
The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...
.
[
]
See also
*
Early 1990s recession
The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...
"The recession that Australia had to have".
*
Social Contract (Britain)
The Social Contract was a policy by the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1970s Britain.
In return for the repeal of 1971 Industrial Relations Act, food subsidies, and a freeze on rent increases, the Trade Union Congress ensured that its me ...
Notes
{{reflist, 32em
History of Australia since 1945
Economic history of Australia