Tim Gurner, founder and CEO of property development company Gurner Group, has called for a rise in unemployment to reduce “arrogance” in workers at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) Property Summit on Tuesday.
The 41-year-old millionaire faced intense backlash online over his comments criticising the productivity of tradespeople in relation to how much they are paid.
“People decided they didn’t really want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had a massive issue on productivity,” Gurner said at the Summit in Sydney on Tuesday.
“Tradies have definitely pulled back on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.”
Gurner said there needs to be “pain in the economy”, calling for a 40-50 per cent rise in the unemployment rate.
“We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he said. “There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around.
“It’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude.”
Gurner’s comments implied laying workers off will reduce “arrogance in the employment market”.
Gurner Group founder Tim Gurner tells the Financial Review Property Summit workers have become "arrogant" since COVID and "We've got to kill that attitude." https://t.co/lcX3CCxGuj pic.twitter.com/f9HK2YZRRE
— Financial Review (@FinancialReview) September 12, 2023
Journalists, academics and politicians criticised the millionaire’s comments at the summit, including former radio broadcaster Mike Carlton.
“This Gurner character personifies everything that is wrong with unfettered capitalism and the cult of the super-CEO: rampant greed and an arrogant contempt for working people,” Carlton wrote on X (Twitter).
Dr Collette Snowden, an academic in media, public relations and technology, said a lot of the problem lies in the audience’s reaction to Gurner’s comments – or lack thereof.
“When Tim Gurner casually and sincerely suggested that pain be inflicted on other human beings – to put them in their place – NOT ONE PERSON in the audience challenged him – they nodded their heads in agreement. He is not an isolated case,” Dr Snowden tweeted.
President of the Australian Medical Association, Professor Steve Robson, commented on the damaging effects unemployment can have on individuals, condemning Gurner’s call for higher rates of unemployment.
“This is a breathtakingly irresponsible statement,” he wrote on X.
“Unemployment is associated with a range of adverse health outcomes including suicide. I say this with some confidence having studied suicide and unemployment.”
— AMA President (@amapresident) September 12, 2023
As of July 2023, the ABS reported the unemployment rate in Australia was 3.6 per cent. Economists suggest the optimum rate of unemployment for healthy economic growth is between 3.5 and 4.5 per cent.
Michele Bullock, the incoming Reserve Bank governor, said in June that the unemployment rate needs to rise to 4.5 per cent, putting 140,000 people out of work, in order to control inflation.
Tim Gurner’s company, Gurner Group, was founded in 2013 and is now reportedly worth more than $9.5 billion. Tim Gurner’s individual net worth is said to be around $929 million, according to the AFR’s 2022 Rich List.
This is not the first time Gurner has made headlines for controversial comments. In an interview on 60 Minutes in 2017, Gurner said he believes young people will never afford a home if they continue “spending $40 a day on smashed avocados and coffees and not working”.