Stingy bosses need to pay more wages

[MotherBear]

Stingy bosses need to lift game and pay workers honest wages
Page 1 of 2 .......5:00AM Sunday February 10, 2008
By Matt McCarten

Michael Cullen demanded this week that employers must increase wages. We have an extraordinary situation where we have full employment yet our wages are among the lowest in the developed world.

Employers tell me that they can't get staff and can't retain their experienced staff, with the best and the brightest moving overseas to earn more money.

Profits are way up and business has been so successful here that the Reserve Bank has to keep jacking up the interest rates to slow the economy. The World Bank continues to commend our government for its pro-business policies and rates us number one on Earth when it comes to supporting business.

Therefore it must be galling to the Government that the chiefs of certain employer groups keep demanding that the Government create an even more pro-business environment. I suspect this has more to do with politics than business.

Taxpayers pour hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting economic development for businesses and subsidising business profitability. You can almost understand Cullen's frustration when employers, at the same time as receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer support, demand tax cuts as a solution to skilled workers' exodus to other countries.

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