Why is it so important for the grunts of society to be able to plan their next exercise in poor capital allocation? If a worker is good at his job and the economy is strong then he should have nothing to worry about. I dare say the only cause of anxiety in the work place is union scare campaigns.

In response to the widget example. Say Larry, the owner of the widget concern does increase his company's profitiblity by 25% by sacking various workers.

What does he do with the money? Does he place it in a bank? Does he hide it under his pillow? No, he invests it in capital producing projects such as a dog house factory or a company hoping to build locally produced cars.

You see there are secondary effects to efficency.

I believe that the new IR reforms do have some merit. Both sides of the political divide have attempted to move the majority of IR powers to the Federal arena, because of its capacity to simplify wages, awards and conditions etc, and also the savings which could be realised through this reform (ie only one system, not several).

However, the current reforms remove all of the beneficial provisions, ncluded in the original system because of the IR disputes of the 1890's. These were agreed upon by both sides of parliament, because they could prevent a repeat of the crippling industrial disputes of that time.

Removal of these provisions will inevitably cause these problems to reappear. They also remove the protection of employees' from arbitrary, unfair dismissal and treatment, therefore the reforms do not benefit the employees on the whole.

What is needed is a means of protecting the employees from the few irresponsible employers that would otherwise seek to enslave the (particularly) unskilled, unqualified, general labour they employ.

I have just completed the first draft of my proposal to do just this, any comments gratefully accepted (however be reasonable).

http://jezreelvalley.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_jezreelvalley_archive.html

DLC, if only workers were sacked for being incompetent, but often workers are retrenched / sacked because the board of directors has decided that their work is not part of core business.

A famous case in point was the NAB wanted to outsource their comms staff to Telstra, assuming that Telstra would keep the staff servicing the NAB comms, Telstra couldn't guarantee this and the highly skilled staff looked around for alternate employment to discover they were so specialised they had no alternative employers.

In Victoria in 1992 many Victorian public servants were sacked /retrenched when Kennett got into power - 55% of these people never worked again and in many cases suffered nervous breakdowns because of the manner of their retrenchment and loss of status.

The cleaner is working for the supermarket chain that took a general manager to court for $6 million of home renovations. No one who has worked in head office of that organisation has any illusions as to its efficiency or visionary thinking.

I think the social contract expects us to look after those below us as well as those ahead of us but if employers are free to act like an unprincipled private school bullies then Australia is a sadder place.

If you are silly enough to believe that good workers always are treated fairly, then good on ya! Why do we so often hear of staff fired then rehired - although now at 25% less than their leaving salaries?

If you look at the average Australian enterpreneurs performance they are inclined to invest in land after they have made their fortune. australia started car manufacturing in 1947 using debentures raised in Australia guaranteed by the government. Australia's high tech industries like bio tech and IT were seeded by government initiatives. An unlikely prospect for the foreseeable future

Previously workplace legislation allowed under-performing employees to roam the workplace... now there will instead be both under-competent employers able to hire and fire due to their own mistakes and whims, and under-competent self-employeds.

Worker mobility? Maybe a more viable option for some of us if we could transport entitlements between jobs as well. As a working parent in my 40's I have some leave saved up to help with the difference between accrual rate and the years ahead while my son will want to spend school holiday taime with me. I have significant sick leave accrued - might be useful as I get older. If I leave my work my leave entitlements get cashed out and accrued sick leave disappears in a puff of nothing. If the government wants worker mobility it needs to bring in entitlement mobility as well.

I have enough job stability that I can maintain some kind of balance between my job, my parenting and some me time. Trying to maintain that balance is hard enough without adding in unnecessary changes of employer. I stayed with the same employer during the times when there was a big worker shortage in my industry and I could have got more elsewhere because that balance is important, I'm not real excited about moving on when the demand has lessened somewhat.

R0bert