ACT, I understand your point and don't disagree that CPI increases are not a given.
However, unless the agenda is the 'real' reduction of western wages (which it most likely is) then logically (and I believe, morally) CPI wage increases should be a given.
If my wage was denominated in gold or 'X' number of loaves of bread then I would get the same every year. As I am paid in a depreciating fiat currency I need my wage to increase (or decrease if deflation be the case) to continue to receive the same wage in gold or 'X' number of loaves of bread. If this is not the case I am taking a wage cut every year.
To turn the argument around (to where I perceive your interests to lay) would be to say that a company should not be allowed to increase the price of its product unless it can show an improvement in the quality or utility of the product.
Just because something is 'just the way it is' does not make it ethically (a foreign term for many large businesses today) right.
Brodle - I agree with you about the economics of wage increases as you have outlined. However unless there is an intrinsic regulatory link between prices and wages, then employers are basically left to their own devices on what they "agree" to increase pay by. If there is no requirement to incorporate in enterprise bargaining, taxation levels, inflation/deflation rates, "cost of living" then the only obligation is to "obey the law" (ie don't pay less than the award). The notion of the enterprise is what stands foremost in the IR system around bargaining (the balanced fair system that governments have argued over the years is far from accurate).
The "real wages" debate of the past 20 years has been a real misnomer. Since the inception of enterprise level bargaining the notion of real wage increases has been used to demonstrate that employees have "benefited" from the shift from centralised to decentralised. But we know this is a very simplistic view as the concept of real wage increases incorporates far more than the 3% p.a that employer X might agree to pay - taxation, CPI levels.