New agreements bump up aged care pay by 4.4 per cent

Workers on new collective agreements are scoring average wage increases of up to 5.8 per cent, according to fresh data released by the workplace umpire.

The latest fortnightly wages data for enterprise agreement applications to the Fair Work Commission showed average annual pay rises were 4.8 per cent across 191 new workplace deals. The agreements were lodged between August 26 and September 8 and covered 39,481 employees.

Workers on collective agreements in the educational services industry scored the highest average pay rise, up 5.8 per cent, followed by construction and aged care sectors, rising 4.9 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.

Of all new agreements, 29 per cent were lodged by a union and achieved an average annual pay increase of 5.8 per cent, well above the 4.8 per cent average increase of applications without union backing.

But union-lodged agreements covered just 1927 workers, while 37,544 workers were covered under agreements not lodged by unions.

Latest wage data, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in August, showed that the annual wage growth fell to 3.6 per cent in the year to June – down from 3.7 per cent in March.

However, the June quarter result fell short of the 0.8 per cent increase in the seasonally adjusted consumer price index, meaning that it was the 12th consecutive quarterly decline in real wages.

The next round of official wage data in November will include the Fair Work Commission’s annual award wage decision of a 5.75 per cent increase, which is forecast to add 0.7 percentage points to total wage growth in the September quarter.