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The Forum > Article Comments > What do AWAs really pay? > Comments

What do AWAs really pay? : Comments

By David Peetz and Alison Preston, published 20/7/2007

Research indicates that AWAs are frequently used for cost cutting or union avoidance.

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Thanks Real,

It's these sort of comments that are eating away at the credibility of this government.

To be constantly told that we never had it so good, in spite of personal experience makes them look either ignorant or deluded or both.

Please keep it up for at least the next 6 months.
Posted by wobbles, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 4:11:29 PM
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"I will argue a convincing case for AWAs - "Made in China" or made in anywhere but Australia. (Take a look at the frozen food section in the supermarket - "Made in China".)" - Communicat

I will make a convincing case against AWA's , The quality of Germnan technology compared to the quality of cheap Chinese knock offs.

There are issues with comparing wages. China has a far lower productivity than Australia, it takes more worker hours to produce the same goods in China. To get around this the quality of cheaply produced goods is at marginal standard. Wages in China are comparitable with the cost of living in China. Where China out competes Australia is in the unskilled labour population and we will never beat them because we dont have the unskilled population to compete with each other to make AWA's viable. To make AWA's truley work Howard must close down schools or at least waste education hours installing Ned Kelly history and teaching arbitary cultural values (just like Mao did)into kids.

For China's standard of living to rise its wages will have to rise. In many news reports lately China is responding to the reputation it has of producing low quality goods. To do that China will have to up skill. China will be a wealthy nation if it does so. If Australia keeps its 19th Century style AWA's we are doomed to become a third world country within a generation or two producing cheap knock offs for China.

As for retaining good workers , Australian business is often uncommitted to the Australian community and has no intellectual or strategic capacity to develop , innovate product, process or service let alone foster a cohesive work force. Australian business in this era of low quality governance is an anarchy of get rich quick schemes. We remain decades behind the developed world when it comes to employment relations, skilling , philanthropy , investment in the environment, research and skill retention.

Enter Japanese and German automation technology ....
AWA's are the first major act in our decline.
Posted by West, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 7:23:10 PM
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West, your second last paragraph-very well said. That is precisely why AWA's are a joke in our Australian work force. It would be of benefit and applicable to only a few in very, very few businesses.

Too many employers will still tell you when approached for better conditions or pay, 'you're not indispensable/irreplaceable'. Because they know that you need an income more than they need you.

I've resigned once on principle because after 3 years I was still being paid $15.00/per hour though increased nett profit by 30%-consistently. Even a suggestion that only a bonus be payable on an agreed improvement was knocked back. It was the scariest and hardest (financially) 5 months of my life. That was 2 years ago.

I now work in a government position and belong to a Union. I get more money and when there is negotiation there is a union representative present. Me, who hasn't belonged to a Union for 20 years, because the compulsion irked me.
Posted by yvonne, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 8:00:06 PM
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Real: During the 1980s and early 1990s, inflation hit 12% and interest rates reached 18% or more. Yet the Accord delivered annual wage increases of just 3 or 4 or 5%, hugely lower than the inflation rate and the equivalent of massive cuts in wages. You're correct, the ALP in those days did it different than Howard is doing today but, in the 1980s, you had a Liberal-controlled Senate which accepted that Australia had to very significantly change its economy in order to survive in the real world. Today, every state government is Labor and they, along with the federal ALP, have opposed just about every action proposed or undertaken by the Howard government to try and make us more competitive on the world scene. I'm not particularly happy with the poor communication that Howard and company have used to sell their message but I have no problem accepting that Australia is facing competitive pressures from many other countries around the world and, if we don't respond positively to those pressures, then we become the 'banana economy' that Keating warned us about some 20 years ago.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Thursday, 26 July 2007 9:46:36 PM
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Bernie

Please stop rewriting history, inflation in Australia has not been over 10% since 1982. (Hawke was elected in 1983).

The Accord applied to all, AWAs disadvantage the low paid and low skilled.

"Never had it so good" will be on John Howards political tombstone.
Posted by ruawake, Friday, 27 July 2007 7:16:25 AM
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All those tories that think that a person [and there are millions of them] such as yvonne can live on $480 p.w. pay $320 p.w. in rent and feed a family obviously "have never had it so good" as Howard says of we working class. In the past we used to compete by working "smarter" not "harder" those days have disappeared under Howard. Now it's a race to the bottom for ordinary families, which is why all working people should join a union.

Sooner or later when the plastic card hits its limit working people will have to pay or declare themselves bankrupt. It never ceases to amaze me how little people save a few thousand dollars buy a two bob business and suddenly think they are superior, I put it down to an inferiority complex. Their newly found self importance in themselves allows them to exploit the people they once were them selves and they do so with reckless abandon helped of course by our ultimate "little man syndrome" sufferer JWH.
Posted by SHONGA, Friday, 27 July 2007 11:37:00 AM
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