The Fair Work Commission is reviewing whether degree-qualified professional classifications have been undervalued. The Architects Award is in that review.
The Association of Consulting Architects, the employer body, has already told the Commission that architects do not deserve an increase. Nobody else is going to make our case, so we are making it ourselves.
Add your name to the petition. It takes about a minute, and it is open to every architect, member or not.
What we are asking the Commission to do
- Lift the graduate architect minimum to the professional benchmark.
- Recognise architecture graduates as professionals doing professional work.
- Acknowledge that the qualifications, responsibilities and liabilities architectural workers carry are not reflected in current Award rates.
- Apply proportional increases through every classification above.
Why the floor matters
We design the buildings Australians live in, work in, learn in and are treated in. We carry professional liability on every project. We sign off on fire safety, accessibility, building codes and compliance. The scope of the work has expanded for decades. The Award floor has not moved with it.
Our five-year graduates earn less than three-year construction-management graduates. That is not a quirk of the classification structure. It is the undervaluation of architectural labour, passed down the chain until it lands on the workers doing the job.
An Award increase is different from a pay rise won in one office. It does not depend on your employer agreeing to it, and it does not require you to negotiate alone. It lifts the floor for every architect in the country at once. That is what makes this rare.
What happens after you sign
The Commission moves on evidence and on scale. Signing builds the second one. The first one is harder, and it is what we will ask for next: real data on what architects are actually paid and the hours we actually work. No one else is collecting it, so it has to come from us.