Privileging wage and salary increases? Who asks, gets, doesn’t ask or doesn’t get a raise in Australia

ABSTRACT

Australian workers have experienced low to no wage growth for several years. This study examines Australian Workplace Relations Study data to describe and categorise workers’ experiences in obtaining wage or salary increases, or a promotion, in their current workplaces. The findings suggest sharp divisions. On one hand, there are those achieving better pay and/or promotions who include managers, but also clerical and administrative workers, who often also benefit from bonus payments or commissions; and workers in companies covered largely by Individual Arrangements who negotiate their wages. These groups contrast with workers without pay rise or promotion, who include community and personal service workers, some of whom opt not to seek better conditions. One worker in eight is tied to a firm without processes and procedures for promotion or wage negotiations, and without recent experience of improved conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Pay rise
• promotion
• Australian workplace relations study
• wage bargaining

Acknowledgment

This paper uses confidentialised data from the Fair Work Commission Australian Workplace Relations Study 2014. The data collection for the AWRS was conducted by ORC International. The findings and views based on these data should not be attributed to the Fair Work Commission.

Disclaimer

The author would like to thank the Fair Work Commission for making the data available. Thanks also go to the three reviewers of this paper.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Australia has however been experiencing a ‘per capita recession’ as GDP has been growing more slowly than her population has been increasing, resulting in decreasing per capita GDP since the second quarter of 2019.

2. https://www.rba.gov.au/statistics/tables/.

3. Flexitime, job share, part-time working, time off in lieu, working from home, flexible leave, banking hours.

4. Career development plans, training plans, study/study leave, mentoring program, job mobility program, focus on promoting from within the existing workforce.

5. Seniority expressed by wage/salary structure from Award or Enterprise Agreement, grading or classification system, job title, years/months of experience, level of qualification required

6. Details available from the author upon request.

7. The LCA was repeated with random sub-samples of different sizes. Each analysis identified matching classes with similar goodness-of-fit.

8. In-kind payments include holiday trips, attendances at conferences, seminars; vouchers, gift cards, and others. They may be low as well as high value. Non-cash benefits refers to motor vehicles and associated costs, computer/internet connections with private use allowed, child care, mobile telephone with private use allowed, shares, low-interest loans, and accommodation.

9. Table 3 only shows those characteristics of this latent class or features of its workplaces that were statistically significantly different from those of all other workers in the study.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Andreas Cebulla

Andreas Cebulla is Associate Professor at the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, Flinders University of South Australia.  His research has covered employment support and labour market policy and evaluation, youth transitions, migration, ageing, disability, and the sociology of risk.  This article was written whilst employed at the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, University of Adelaide.