From Reserve Bank encouraging wage increases to keeping a lid on a feared inflationary spiral

INFLATION: The low-interest rate era is ending after more than a decade.

FIFTEEN years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis, the era of "emergency" low interest rates is ending.

With it, comes the inflation that many had feared would arrive long before now as an inevitable consequence of truckloads of post-GFC cheap money.

Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe said last month that Australia's headline inflation rate of 5.1 per cent was "below that of most other advanced economies", but we will be swept up in the inflationary tide along with the rest of the world, with no real way of telling where these volatile waters will take us, nor when they will recede.

This time last year, the Reserve Bank was bemoaning low wages growth and encouraging employers to open the purse strings.

Now, the fear is of a wages spiral, as unions, and those individuals with the ability to bargain meaningfully, push for increases to keep up with the cost of living.

Last month, the Fair Work Commission raised the national minimum wage by $40 a week - a 5.2 per cent increase that took the basic rate to $21.38 an hour, up from $20.33.

The structure of our industrial relations system means such wage cases flow through only to those on awards - or about a quarter of the workforce.

Those employed through other means - mainly under enterprise bargaining agreements - will have to negotiate their own increases.

One such example, as reported online yesterday, sees members of the Maritime Union of Australia seeking annual increases of 5 per cent a year in a new three-year agreement at GrainCorp's Carrington terminal.

The union says GrainCorp is enjoying bumper profits and can afford to pay the increases.

Most employers instinctively resist pay demands, and a new discussion paper by the (admittedly left-leaning) Australia Institute has made headlines this week for arguing that corporate profits, and not labour costs, have had the most significant impact on our rising levels of inflation.

But regardless of cause, workers wanting to keep up with the cost of living will demand pay increases.

And thanks to an ultra-tight jobs market - with near full employment and a COVID-driven shortage of new migrant labour - employees have more ammunition than usual on their side.

This volatile environment will test both the new Labor government, and the industrial relations system.

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KEEPING UP: GrainCorp workers are seeking three annual pay increases of 5 per cent a year in a new enterprise agreement. After years of sluggish wage growth, such an increase would only keep pace with this year's headline inflation figure, as confirmed by the Reserve Bank.