Tim Gurner is the CEO of Australian real estate company Gurner Group
A multi-millionaire property developer from Australia has sparked outrage after saying he wants unemployment to rise in his country because workers have become ‘too arrogant’. Tim Gurner, CEO of Australian property company Gurner Group, said the Covid pandemic has changed the work ethic of employees and unemployment is putting them in their place. Independent reported.
“I think the problem we’ve had is that because of COVID, people decided they didn’t want to work as much anymore. They have been paid a lot over the years not to do too much and we need to see that change,” he told the Australian Financial Review Property Summit in Sydney.
According to him, the key to curbing ‘arrogance’ in the labor market is higher unemployment.
”We need to see unemployment rise. In my opinion, unemployment should rise by 40 to 50 percent. We need to see the pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he added.
”There has been a systematic change where employees feel that the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. We have to kill that attitude, and we have to do it by damaging the economy,” he further said.
Australia’s unemployment rate is 3.6 percent, or about 500,000 people, meaning an estimated 250,000 workers would lose their jobs with a 50 percent increase.
a video of his controversial comments has gone viral on social media, prompting immediate reactions. “Why doesn’t he do us a favor and volunteer as the first step to the 50%,” one user wrote. Another said: ‘Everything a business leader shouldn’t say. Quite incredible.”
His comments also provoked strong reactions from US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
‘Reminder that great CEOs have skyrocketed their own pay so much that the ratio of CEO to employee pay is now at one of the highest levels *on record* Ocasio-Cortez wrote about X.
After receiving criticism for his statements, he said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that he was “wrong” for saying what he did. He admitted his comments were “very insensitive.”
“At the AFR Property Summit this week I made a number of comments about unemployment and productivity in Australia that I deeply regret and were wrong. There are clearly important conversations to be had in this environment of high inflation, price pressure on housing and rental prices due to a lack of supply and other cost of living issues. My comments were deeply insensitive to workers, traditions and families across Australia who are being affected by these cost of living pressures and job losses.
“I want to be clear: I appreciate that when someone loses their job it has a profound impact on them and their families, and I sincerely regret that my words did not convey empathy for those who found themselves in that situation,” the wrote Mr Gurner.
Mr Gurner, who has been featured in Forbes Australia and is one of Australia’s richest men, has a net worth of $912 million, according to estimates by The Australian Financial Review.
