Supersize Poor

The man who ate Big Macs for a month to prove how unhealthy they are, has done it again. Award winning US filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and his girlfriend spent 30 days working on the US minimum wage. It made them sick.

Even with Morgan working two jobs and his girlfriend a third, they could not keep up with the rent; they fell ill, got injured on the job and could not pay the doctor or hospital bills.

They lived in the arse end of town, sharing a cheap flat with plagues of ants, walked or caught public transport everywhere, went hungry and barely survived the month. They talked to other workers struggling to survive who remembered earning more a quarter of a century ago. The minimum wage in the US is less than $US6 per hour. And it hasn't gone up in eight years. No one mentions unions. They do not exist in this part of Carolina.

This is the society that the Howard Government is about to create in Australia. Unlike America, Australia's destitute are mainly the mentally ill, alcoholics, drug addicts or victims of domestic violence. But in the world's richest nation workers make up 60-70 per cent of the homeless -- the working poor. They labour day and night and yet still don't earn a living wage. They cannot feed their families.

A report by the University of Sydney's Industrial Relations research centre commissioned by UnionsNSW and released in October, predicted the same in Australia under the Howard IR regime. The new laws will create a pool of low paid workers with poor health, who will die young.

The report was based on a comparative study of the effects of workplace policy on health in Europe and the US.