Young Australians share why they are not motivated to work harder after being criticised by presenter Steve Price.
The conservative commentator recently addressed younger generations on The Project, amid calls for annual leave to be extended to five weeks a year.
The campaign, an initiative of the influential Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, calls for additional leave to reduce employee burnout.
Currently, employees of Big W and Apple are entitled to five weeks of leave, thanks to company agreements set out in the SDA.
Price, however, was unfazed by the calls for extra vacation days and said he was glad he no longer had to manage employees.
“We are trying to increase productivity in this country,” he explained.
“So we have people refusing to go back to the office and working from home in barely washed tracksuits three days a week,” he said.
‘And now they want five weeks of vacation.’
A debate broke out between Project presenters Georgie Tunny (left) and Steve Price (right) who argued that young Australians don’t want to ‘work very hard’
Georgie Tunny, a millennial, responded to Price by arguing that the characteristics of the ‘work culture’ for young Australians had changed permanently.
“I think the younger generations in particular have a very different view of work,” she said.
Price interrupted the conversation to claim that young Australians didn’t want to “work very hard”.
Tunny continues: ‘Your job, your identity or your career has, as it were, disappeared.’
Angry social media users jumped into the generational debate and took aim at Price.
“Where is the incentive for young people to work hard, if hard work can’t buy a house or even buy basic vegetables,” one of them said.
Another wrote: ‘You get what you pay for, and it’s not worth working hard. There is literally no benefit to working as hard as you can.’
“If you can no longer qualify for the market, can no longer book holidays and can no longer buy basic necessities, what motivation is there to care or be productive,” added a third.
Price was soon taken up by young Australians, who said rising living costs and house prices meant there was no incentive to work harder (stock photo)
Another suggested that employers should raise wages and introduce bonuses as an incentive to make their staff work harder.
“Nobody is interested in working themselves to death for crumbs,” they explained.
A fifth added: ‘I don’t want to work really hard to make sure CEOs earn millions while I can barely buy bread myself.
‘Even an extra week off won’t help if I don’t have money to actually do anything or go anywhere.’
A sixth said: ‘Our generation is tired of working hard so that the upper echelons can take the glory and the spoils. We know our worth.’
A recent report from the Productivity Commission found that Australians born after 1990 are finding it harder to move up financially than previous generations.
The Economic Mobility Report shows young Australians are increasingly earning less than their parents did at the same age, bucking a key financial trend.
The commission concluded that the weak income growth of young Australians was partly due to the poor economic performance following the global financial crisis.
“Younger Australians faced stagnant wages in 2001 and were more likely to be in jobs with lower education requirements and earning potential than young people with similar skills,” the report said.
‘Which could have negative consequences for their wages and career choices in the long term.’
