FWA increases minimum rates by $26 a week 03 June 2010 11:19am Fair Work Australia's minimum wage panel, in its first decision, has this morning increased modern award minimum weekly rates by $26 - just $1 short of the $27-a-week sought by the ACTU. FWA President Justice Geoffrey Giudice, Senior Deputy Presidents Ian Watson and Anne Harrison, Commissioner Frank Raffaelli, John Vines, Professor Sue Richardson and Peter Dwyer also rejected employer organisation arguments that any increase should be delayed, ruling the operative date of its decision will be July 1, with the new rates to take effect from the first full pay period on or after that date. The decision, which follows last year's pay freeze by the Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) in its final determination before being abolished, lifts the federal weekly minimum wage to $569.90 ($15 an hour) from $543.78 ($14.31 an hour), where it has been since 2008. The ACTU had argued for an across-the-board $27-a-week increase to minimum rates for Australia's 1.4 million workers on award wages; the AiG a $12-a-week rise, with a delay in its implementation in some sectors; and the ACCI an increase of "no more than $12.50 a week" from the minimum wage up to the tradesperson's rate and $10.50 above that, and with "at least a month" before the new rates take affect. The Federal Government, in its submission on the first minimum wage review under its new IR regime, didn't specify a figure, but urged the panel to award "a considered real increase in minimum wages that at a minimum reflects the cost increases since the last minimum wage rise in 2008". Background The Coalition's wage-fixing panel, the AFPC, in its first decision in October 2006 awarded pay increases of $27.36 a week to the lowest paid employees and $22.04 to those earning more than $700 a week. In 2007, it awarded a $10.26-a-week increase to employees on pay scales up to $700 a week and $5.30 to those earning more than that. In its third determination, and its first under a Labor Government, it in 2008 awarded a higher than expected across-the-board $21.66-a-week increase, which it followed up with last year's freeze. The AIRC in its final wage fixing decision in June 2005 awarded a $17-a-week across-the-board increase. In 2004, it awarded a safety net increase of $19 a week in all federal award rates - its highest ever increase. In 2003, it awarded a $17-a-week increase in award rates up to and including $731.80 and a $15-a-week increase for rates above that. In 2002, it awarded an $18-a-week increase to all rates.