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An Australian business chief sparked consternation with comments at a real estate summit earlier this week in which he suggested people should be more grateful to their employers and that rising unemployment was needed to boost productivity.
Tim Gurner, the multi-millionaire CEO of the Gurner Group, a real estate company founded in 2013, told the conference that COVID-19 has created a work culture in which employee relations and work ethics have deteriorated. Gurner suggested that the country’s current unemployment rate of 3.7% would need to rise by 40-50% to reduce the “insolence of the labor market”.
“There was a systematic change where employees felt the employer was extremely lucky to have them,” Mr Gerner said.
“We need to see the pain in the economy. We have to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” Gerner continued.
A video recording of Gurner’s statements quickly went viral, prompting an outcry from millions of social media users.
Shortly after Gurner made his statements, he continued post on LinkedIn saying he “made some comments about unemployment and productivity in Australia that I deeply regret and were wrong”.
“In this environment of high inflation, price pressures on housing and rents due to lack of supply and other cost of living issues, there are clearly important conversations to be had. My comments were very insensitive to the employees, professions and families across Australia who have been affected by these cost of living pressures and job losses,” Gurner wrote.
This isn’t the first time Gurner has faced heat for off-the-cuff comments.
In a 2017 interview with “60 Minutes,” Gurner said millennials can’t afford housing in their habit of buying avocado toast.
“When I was trying to buy my first house, I didn’t buy a 19-buck chopped avocado and four coffees at $4 each,” he said. said.
All this despite the fact that even at $19 a day, giving up avocado toast for an entire year will save you about $7,000 — far less than the down payment on most homes.
