https://www.9news.com.au/national/60-minutes-ross-greenwood-australian-households-budget-money-pressures-election/d7039de7-77bb-487b-ba76-d67862d2b85cFor our story about wages, I interviewed Lindsay Partridge, CEO of Brickworks – which makes most of Australia’s bricks. He explained his first-hand experience of the current wage dilemma.
Last year Brickworks invested $151 million to buy America’s fourth largest brick-maker, Glen-Gery, based in Pennsylvania. The purchase of Glen-Gery gave Partridge an active comparison of wages between Australia and the US.
He says the wages he pays brick-makers in the US are exactly half what he pays those with identical jobs in Australia.
His bill for gas – also vital in making bricks – is a third. It’s got to the point that Brickworks can make bricks in the US and ship them to Australia more competitively than many of his local brick plants can make them here.
In other words, the debate about wages is also about competitiveness and, like it or not, many of us are competing for work with people thousands of kilometres away.
Lindsay Partridge has another sobering story he wants to share, and he tells it on the grounds of the vast warehouses in Western Sydney that should have been Brickworks’ future quarries.
Partridge’s company now makes more money jointly developing the land to build giant warehouses – among the biggest in Australia – than it does making bricks on the same ground.
