Prices and Incomes Accord

The Prices and Incomes Accord was an agreement between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer (later Prime Minister) Paul Keating in 1983. Employers were not party to the Accord. Unions agreed to restrict wage demands and the government pledged to minimise inflation. The government was also to act on the social wage. At its broadest this concept included increased spending on education as well as welfare.

This was seen as a method to reduce inflation without reducing the living standards of Australians. At the beginning of the Accord, only one union, the New South Wales Nurses Federation, voted against the Accord. The Accord continued for the whole period of the Labor government through seven stages including, after 1993, enterprise bargaining.

The first Accord secured for all workers a 4.3% pay rise (September 1983), a 4.1% pay rise (April 1984), and a deferred 2.6% pay rise over the initial 3-year period, improvements in family payments and child care, and the introduction of Medicare. Unemployment also fell from over 10% (in the 2nd quarter of 1983) to just under 8%. Other achievements won by the Accord during its first three years included:

The original accord was designed to tackle the problem of stagflation and to reduce the number of industrial disputes. It included half-yearly wage increases indexed to the consumer price index (CPI), and supported the introduction of Medicare

Bob Hawke, Prime Minister of Australia, described the Accord as a centralised system of wage fixation, for the purpose of economic recovery:

As far as wages are concerned, the Government will participate in the conference on wage fixation scheduled to be held in the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. We will base our approach to that Conference on the conclusions of the Summit and on the prices and incomes accord. In that context, I would point out again that all at the Summit agreed that if a centralised system of wage fixing is to work, there must be an abstention from sectional claims except in special and extraordinary circumstances. Let me say that my Government's interpretation of what constitutes such circumstances is the common -sense interpretation and leaves no room for selfish claims from maverick sections of the trade union movement. Participants at the Summit Conference recognised that if restraint in incomes is to be exercised, then it should be exercised universally. In that spirit of equitable sharing of the burdens of recovery the Summit also stressed the need for restraint in non-wage incomes such as dividends, professional fees and the like.

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