Union boss Michele O'Neil is set to argue for a six per cent minimum wage increase before the industrial empire.
She will present the Australian Council of Trade Unions case - for about $43 more a week - to a Fair Work Commission hearing in Sydney on Wednesday.
Ms O'Neil is the first ACTU president since Bob Hawke in the 1970s to do so.
She will make the case for the "modest" six per cent rise, which she says will affect more than two million people.
Wealth and income are not being shared in Australia, she will argue.
"A trickle-down market approach simply isn't capable of delivering fair minimum wages or a fair and relevant safety net, let alone supporting the normal needs of a human being living in one of the richest countries on earth," she will say.
"That approach says to those that have helped to build the 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth in this country that they should, at best, stand still, while those above them speed on the high road further out of reach.
"This is an approach we reject."
Near-zero real wage increases result in an entrenched working poor, high inequality and social divisiveness, she says.
Ms O'Neil will point to a range of statistics to support the ACTU's case, including that one contributor to recent lower levels of economic growth has been a decline in growth of household consumption.
Wage growth has not kept up with GDP growth and many costs of living, she will say.
The review comes as Labor pledges to immediately scrap the coalition's submission to the annual wage review and ask the industrial empire to raise award wages.
If elected on Saturday, Labor would also ask the commission to examine the idea of a "living wage".
But business groups say a hike of six per cent would destroy jobs and threaten economic growth.
The business sector will instead argue for a minimum wage increase of two per cent this year, marking a rise of about $14.40 per week to the current level of $719.20.
