CHAP, 3.—REGULATION IN AUSTRALIA 17
Principle of Wage Fixation

T HE main emphasis of all Australian laws has been on the guaranty
 of a living wage to all workers. A very general practice,
however, has been to fix a basic wage for unskilled laborers,
satisfying only the “normal needs of an average employee, regarded
as a human being living in a civilized community,” and a secondary
wage to remunerate skill or other particular qualities (a practice
established by the Commonwealth court of arbitration and defined
by its president, Henry Bournes Higgins).?* The court for a long
time, in fixing a basic wage, started from cost-of-living figures ascertained
 in Melbourne in 1907 and applied an index number to take into
account the decrease in the purchasing power of money.” The court
declines to reduce that basic wage. The exigencies of competition,
however, have been taken into account in fixing secondary wages.?®
The court has endeavored to maintain a certain margin between the
wages of skilled and of unskilled labor in order to provide an
centive for properly learning a trade. ;
The basic wages under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth court,
effective February 1, 1927, were fixed as follows for the main centers:

Basic wage per week

DTOTRIOTIETIR cocci er oe i i it mt i ii
Sidney — eam
Adelaide
1 ©
TTIEBATIR: coc tmmosstosinonissetioiio iomso  8 aeis ie e  E : 57
BIODAPE cori iin Spr iii iim mimi igi. 8 :
These figures are based on the cost of living in these six State
capitals during the last quarter of 1926 ascertained by the Federal
Bureau of Census and Statistics?
In 1922 the Broken Hill Proprietary Co. appealed against a living
wage “ which left it no profits.” The full court, on appeal, decided
against the company. The reasoning of the judgment can be summed
up approximately as follows: If works can not exist and pay a
living wage, and if there is a national interest that the works should
continue, the workers should not be required to shoulder a burden
of the community, but a subsidy from the funds available by general
taxation should solve the difficulty.®®
South Australia has applied since 1916 the principle that the
“reasonable needs of a worker in a community where the national
income is high are greater than those of a worker in a community
where the national income is low.” 3
While the dependence of the living-wage standard upon the total
production of the country is admitted, that does not imply dependence
 of the minimum of existence to be guaranteed by the living
wage upon the particular and temporary financial conditions of a

#8 Harvard Law Review, January, 1919, p. 192: “A new province for law and order,”
¥ Henry Bournes Higgins.
7 Idem, p. 199.
B JTdem, p. 201.
® Monthly Labor Review, May, 1927, p. 172.
¥ Burns, EB. M.: Wages and the State. London, 1928, pe: 279, 280,
3 Judge Jethro Brown, in Australla, Economic and Political Studies, p. 208. (Quoted
vy HB. M. Burns, in Wages and the State, p. 307.) -