August 2, 2007 - 5:42PM
A low-paid American worker brought to Australia by unions has warned that crime will inevitably increase with the deregulation of wages and industrial relations.
Allen White, a 40-year-old janitor from South Carolina, says he is shocked by the absence of police in everyday life in Australia but says things will change if employers are given a free rein with wages.
The minimum wage in the United States is just $US5.85 ($A6.85) an hour, having recently been increased by 70 US cents (82 Australian cents) in the first wage rise in 10 years.
Mr White works on that wage, with five days of annual leave, no sick leave and no health insurance because he cannot afford it.
"Since I've been here I've been looking at the type of freedom that you all have and how everyone is so not worried about how they pay their bills because they are in a situation where they can," he told reporters.
"I also notice too that I haven't seen no policemen either, like it is in the States.
"I want to say that if this wage thing kicks in and people are forced to sign contracts just to please their bosses instead of pleasing themselves, and they're going to have to deal with a pay cut, they're going to revert to a lot of different things.
"In the US, because of the way the minimum wage is set, you're going to have a high rate of crime because people are going to want to feed their families."
Mr White said families could not survive on $US5.85 ($A6.85) an hour.
"When the system turns around and drops the wages and takes away other benefits that the workers have here, you're going to have a high crime rate and a lot of other things that Australia never did have," he said.
Mr White is on a whistlestop tour of six Australian states and the ACT with two other low-paid American workers - Iris Flores, 36, and Dolores McCoy, 74.
Their trip was funded by the ACTU, which has been campaigning against the government's Work Choices industrial relations laws.
Ms Flores drives a bus in Charleston, South Carolina, for 40 hours a week making $US10.89 ($A12.74) an hour.
She supplements that with a part-time job as a cleaner earning $US8 ($A9.36) an hour.
"I'm roughly working 14 hours a day. No health care, no sick leave, no personal leave, no vacation, no holiday," she said.
She has been impressed by the wage system in Australia and, despite only four per cent unionisation in her state, she wants to change things when she returns home.
"Seeing how Australians stay together, I find the people of Australia to be very compassionate and it has put a fire inside me," she said.
"Believe me, when I get back to the States, I am going to fight, definitely."
The group is scheduled to meet Australian Fair Pay Commission chairman Professor Ian Harper and parliamentarians.
© 2007 AAP
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/crime-rises-as-pay-drops-us-worker-says/200 71402-r1c.html#
********************************************************************* "The peculiar character of the Social Democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into a harmony."
Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1346
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