The idea of a minimum wage, payable to unskilled adult male workers but also serving as the foundation element of the total wage structure, emerged, but was not completely articulated, during the Higgins era. The process is described in this chapter.

3.1 The living wage

The doctrine of the living wage had a central position in discussions of wage policy for the first quarter of the 20th century and, to a lesser extent, beyond. The underlying idea was that the employer had a responsibility to provide for the worker some minimum standard of living—one that permitted the worker to maintain himself and his family at a level consistent with prevailing concepts of adequacy. In this definition, there are obvious areas of vagueness. Imprecision of meaning gave rise to differences of opinion about policies.

The concept of a living wage was not invented in Australia, even if the Australian wage-fixers were to contribute significantly to its development as a policy goal and to give it a local flavour. Classical economics—from Adam Smith onward—contained a notion of a natural wage that would suffice to ensure the maintenance and reproduction of the working population. Smith himself regarded a rate ‘sufficient to maintain the labourer and to enable him to bring up a family’ as the ‘lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity’ (quoted by Sawkins 1933, p. 11).