Want a raise? How to ask for a salary hike

When Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe argued that the real source of workers’ unhappiness was an unwillingness to lobby for higher wages, he overlooked a key tenet of negotiation: we negotiate most successfully when we have highly valued (and scarce) skills.

Negotiation is all about who has the power. If your skills are not in high demand or are readily found elsewhere, you have less power. It would be unrealistic, for example, to suggest a secondary school student working on an hourly rate, or a semi-skilled factory worker whose industry is in decline is able to negotiate higher