Casual employees currently struggle to make ends meet;If they meet at all! Now conditions for these workers will get a whole lot worse as small and big business collude and compete to cut there costs by avoiding wages and conditions. Accept anything that goes or starve to death is the choice given by Kevin Andrews!
Despicable is not the right word! But then does one have a choice?

Hi there Col, long time no see.

Regarding 'dead end jobs' Let me share a little personal anecdote from this weekend. I went on a mens retreat at Marysville, with guys from my fellowship.
One of them, is a very quite guy, overweight, not terribly smart, and has worked as a process worker, but not has kind of found his niche as a bus driver. Pretty good pay, and cannot be outsourced to Asia ... I would personally regard such a job as a 'dead end' job.
But he is quite happy, and it fits his personality/skill level.

Many people don't need more than this. But life becomes more meaningful when they can interact with all socio economic levels without being 'locked' into a social level due to their work. This is what Christ tought a lot about.

The only things I'd change in IR are

1/ Absolutely ZERO intimidation or 'not ticket no start' bully tactics. Hard Jail time for anyone intimidating employers/suppliers or causing damage or threatening (the Johnson tiles effort was a disgrace to humanity)

2/ Unfair dismissal to be modified to make it fair to both sides in balance. (which it is not at present)

I think people could already reason with their employers to be paid for untaken tea/lunch breaks or annual leave if they wanted to.

If the reforms are perceived as an attack on collective bargaining, it would only be due to the rampant corruption and standover tactics used by brutes in the union movement who care more about power and their own job security than workers living standards.

It is an interesting article, but with one flaw, the man who wrote it knows a lot about economics but little about surviving on the minmum wage. It is sad that all policy and the vast amount of analysis is done by those of us on good incomes and comfortable lives.
I wonder how a single working mother would respond if she had the time or energy to bother reading this article. I often think the people most effected in IR are those least consulted. I think Mr Gruen needs to really look at the true face of what reductions in incomes means. Belt tightening indeed!! How tight can a belt go?

It strikes me that this is little more then an arguement for a race to the bottom. Lets see who can get the poorest working class to do all the work. I feel like all the progress of 100 years is being washed away, slowly but surely the little benefits working people get, overtime and public holidays, are being degraded. There is no point claiming that they won`t go, because most minimum wage earners are in the baseline service industry who like to be open public holidays and weekends. Ofcourse it is covered in a very reasonable guise. The arguement is very netural on the surface and easy to read but still made the line for the changes that much more compellingly. I admire the writing and the logic but at the same time humanity is not about logic.Appling logic to human life will end in tears, for those least able to defend themself`ves.
However i am not convinced racing to the bottom is a true success strategy for Australia.

There is a very short fuse in operation here.

This country has done very well over the past fifty-odd years coming to terms with the world economy. With the progress being made in the countries to our north, this is a profile that is in the process of changing, with none of those changes to our advantage.

Compared to China, the Philippines, Malaysia etc. we are vastly overpaying our work force. It is no use complaining or asking for protection, because we rely as much on those countries for our apparent prosperity (i.e. our ability to buy cheap goods, and thereby stretch the household budget) as we hold them responsible for undermining our industrial base. Such as it is.

The point that most socialist idealists forget is that money has to be earned before it can be spent. Industries that cannot pay their way in the world cannot survive in an open economy, and it is the open economy that has given us such prosperity that we enjoy right now. The alternative to an open economy is a closed one, where we produce only for ourselves, and forego the risks and rewards of international trade. Which is utterly and completely impractical, and no government would contemplate it.

Sadly, our government hasn't the faintest inkling of what is needed and what it takes to run a business, and unfortunately they apply this same skills vacuum to the economy as a whole.

This present waste-of-space battle is typical, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The entire exercise is designed to give the impression of dynamic activity, when in reality it will have no more impact on our ability to do business with the rest of the world than a tuppeny bunger on cracker night.

The irony of reading an article and posts about IR changes and having an advertising banner that stinks of Liberal Corporatism beam from above - Workchoices!

John Howard lost touch with this voter so long ago and I have only been on the electorate for 10 years - my whole voting life thus far has been marred by a Mr Sheen look-a-like. He might be doing the cleaning but he is just not getting out the stains.

Passing bills through parliament with haste is completely irresponsible and how would the "little boys club" respond if the shoe was on the other foot?!

My helplessness is overwhelming!

I see David Boaz is still preaching the gospel, however he is an employer, and knows nothing of the stress employees face when confronted with an AWA, yes I think the average employee would love to work for less money, or sell their conditions at the rate the employer wants to pay for them, that way the intimidation starts at the interview, not the next day at work. How does David think employees feel about hard won conditions being sacrificed for a pittance, and what happens to our "family time" when employeers tell us to work on Saturday and Sunday? To be fair David may not be an unscrupulous employer, however there are plenty who are, I have worked for a few of them, and if it were not for belonging to a Union one of my employer's would have gotten away with underpaying me by $750.00 which at the time was a lot of money. Is it true that it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of God, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, because there will be a lot of employer's getting rich from this law, of course as we get poorer