Wage Growth

Not common knowledge to me.
Could you give me some examples of 45% overheads for say an electrician who charges $80 minimum per PowerPoint install?

 

I did...

 

Hmmm not sure every trade is entitled or effected by these though to justify 45% overhead.

And why are travel allowances and motor vehicles any different to a PAYG? I don’t get travel allowance or motor vehicles for commuting into work every day. More so I don’t get the luxury of claiming such things in my return.

Also a lot of trades I know work public holidays and charge double bubble. Those who need it have to pay for it.

Also weather doesn’t effect all trades.

I’m not trying to get into an argument but when an electrician comes around and bangs out 4 powerpoints for $320-$400 then it’s taking the pi$$.

 

Typically the calculation for a construction worker goes something like:



Now this is the costing rate ie what it costs to employ someone, then the office/car/supervisory/regulatory costs are added, then PROFIT.

Construction overheads are about 100% on the wage rate, not 45%

It's not a big jump from a costing rate of $50/hr to a charge-out of $70

 

These are award conditions. You get up each morning knowing that you have a fortnightly/monthly period of notice for termination, construction workers are daily employees. I can give employees a DCM/one day's notice or pay in lieu and hasta la vista baby!

You have the luxury of going to the same air-conditioned office, in the same building, sitting at the same desk, warming up the same seat day in day out - the tradie attends a different site several times each week (unless they are working for the head contractor on a project).

Travel allowance is an award condition, it differs from a PAYG office worker's conditions. The tradie receives either the travel allowance (if they are PAYG) or will claim MV use if they are self-employed it is not both. Why should you get paid to travel to the same workplace each day - the NSW On-site Construction Award defines the workplace as anywhere between the Central Coast/Wollongong/Blue Mountains, a pretty big office area.

As to public holiday charge out rates - hmmm why do you think they are called "penalty rates"? (sidenote, it only costs about 10% more for the employer as they aren't required to pay some of the overheads on overtime eg: redundancy or super).

As for weather - inclement weather is an allowance, a few hours of rain may prevent access to a site for days where the workers are either transferred to another site (if possible) or sit on their plush seats unpaid.

 

You really need to do some more reading and due-dilligence before making statements.

 

I second that. We have a formula to calculate the total cost per staff and the normal loading is 42%.

 

Care to elaborate?

 

The Superannuation increase is competing with wage increases.

 

It will crush any hope of getting wages off the canvas despite what that grub Paul Keating says. We need lower costs of employment in this country, not higher. How can we expect to compete with places like Vietnam where they have none of this compulsory superannuation, Workcover etc?

 

Point taken but all the same increasing superannuation to 12.5% is patently ridiculous. That money doesn't just come out of thin air as the superannuation industry would have you believe; it comes out of the total cost of employing and directly affects our ability as a nation to compete.

 

Can't tell if you're serious.

 

Anyone who has followed me on this board knows that I'm 100% for the creation of private sector jobs to kick this country in the pants and get it going again - currently four fifths of the growth in our GDP is due exclusively to increased government spending.

This is totally unsustainable, the government cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity - and it's a Liberal government doing that mind you. Unless we find a way of bring back on shore some of our consumption and manufacturing we are absolutely doomed to become another also-ran nation mired in crime and poverty like Brazil or South Africa.

Despite the official propaganda that we can all sell lattes and haircuts to each other in an imaginary services economy there's no way way that we can alleviate the growing poverty in this nation without accepting the fact that we have to compete directly with Asia (just as Hawke and Keating wanted us to). We urgently need to abolish all taxes on labour making us noncompetitive such as payroll tax, compulsory superannuation etc.

 

and

You're right, the only way we can compete with a third world country is to have third world conditions. Although why you want to compete in a race to the bottom is beside me.

I've worked in managed services for a long time, and have seen the continual off-shoring of many activities, from many countries, to many other countries. While manufacturing and low level tasks can be off-shored, many elements of service and service management simply cannot be offshored, so yes, that is where we should be focusing. Interestingly, automation is a threat to offshoring, not so much a threat to the more advanced, value add, service management tasks.

Cheers,
Inertia.

 

Yeah...nah. Payroll tax maybe but abolishing super is insane.

What he said.

 

Hawke and Keating decided that we were going to compete with Asia forty years ago - all I'm saying is that our living standards must invariably decline as this comes to fruition. And presto - it's happening right now - Australian household incomes have been stalling for the last seven years and most workers have less purchasing power than they did ten years ago.

 

Supposedly we were going to see the end of the provision of the age pension because the superannuation system is now mature. Instead we're seeing the opposite - we have the most expensive and inefficient retirement system in the world and the cost of the age pension (now 2.2 million recipients) is higher than ever.

Something needs to give. 12.5% compulsory superannuation is un-afforadable for employers, un-affordable for the nation.

 

Some ABS stats 2007-2008 to 2017-2018

6523.0 - Household Income and Wealth, Australia, 2017-18

6523.0 - Household Income and Wealth, Australia, 2017-18