(Cont...)

You fantasize with statements like: “Employers can better predict their costs. Workers can either earn more or work when it suits them. They can also get better regularity of income.”

There is NO provision in the legislation for workers to have a greater say on either earning more, getting work when it suits them or better regularity of income.

I’ll predict the chasm that’s developing between the grossly over-paid and increasingly under-performing corporate executives and the remainder of the population will grow rapidly wider and deeper, supported by this legislation.

In Fairyland all may be cooperation, reality poses a very different picture when the corporate bottom line pits the remuneration of workers against the corporate purse and shareholders…America presents a less than pretty picture of the future for Australian workers.

Abysmal health system, workers forced to work two to three jobs to simply pay the bills. The inequity of gratuitous over-indulgence and abhorrent poverty…

You ‘employ between 800 and 900 workers’ and ‘charge other businesses lots of money to help them implement’ what you see as ‘practical workplace changes that will put dollars on their bottom line’.

Perhaps board and executive staff would be better advised to save themselves ‘lots of money’ by running the companies more efficiently and effectively themselves – what are they being paid for?

‘My perspective is necessarily different from an employee of an institution about to lose their career because their services are soon to become extraneous.’

I’ll bet, but let’s tell it straight…you’re making lot’s of money by sacking others to free up more money for those under-performing corporate executives I mentioned earlier…

A recent article in “the Australian” stated that Australian corporate executives had a higher failure rate than most others in the developed world…at a whopping 29%.

A worker with a performance like that wouldn’t expect reward…

Instead, executives have provisions for ‘release’ that see them paid for their failures by the tens of millions.

A reversal of the status quo would be no bad thing…let the deregulated workplace START at the top…in REAL terms and on individual productivity

On the north coast of NSW yesterday a new labour provider told his new crew toilets 2klm away would not be used, lunch shed too would not be used use the bush he said!
one joined the union and was told he must re apply for his job, we are a non union firm.
Bad boss is already cutting rates and conditions, how long before good boss must follow?
This is not reform its murder as many bosses will fall victim as workers, and will the newly rich bad boss spend enought to stop local comunitys suffering from lost wages income?

Meg1, you are making the mistake of taking this piece seriously - for which you should be applauded, since it is a serious issue - but you are in danger of giving the article legitimacy that it doesn't deserve.

Woodyblues, it doesn't matter how many times you read it, it is still going to be a smug recap of how the legislation benefits the author, rather than an examination of the new laws in their own right. If you ran a parasitical business that relies on legal complexities to allow you to exploit small business, you would applaud it too.

wobbles, bringing margaret Thatcher into the argument doesn't help, especially if you fall into the trap of misquoting her. I know that millions of others have done the same, but it actually devalues an argument if you support it with a quotation that is both incorrect and poorly interpreted.

What Thatcher actually said, verbatim, was "And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

The bit that everyone ignores is that what she said immediately before this .... "too many children and people have been given to understand 'I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it'"

What she is drawing attention to is the willingness of "society" to lay its problems at the feet of government, and expect them to be resolved. This leads to a form of cargo-cultism, where we sit back and wait for the government to "do something" - which unfortunately results in exactly the sort of legislation we are discussing here.

Government has few roles to play in the workplace, and whenever it does interfere, it is necessarily to the benefit of one constituency or another. That is because the interference is by definition political, not economic - witness the fact that there isn't a front-bencher on either side of politics that has had any experience running a real business.

Perhaps Paul Keating's opinion in the Financial Review today (Mar 28) pg 63 summarised why it is not a 'choice' at all.

Pericles,
I stand both humbled and corrected.
Thanks for the clarification and my apologies for being so reckless.
Your User Name is an excellent choice.

Why would you pay this guy for advice ? Seems all he would say is "pay everyone a flat hourly rate".

As he goes on he realises that what he meant to say was a flat hourly rate plus maybe some holidays, and maybe some termination arrangements. I wonder if he wrote a longer article would he decide there were other things that workers might want as well ?

Maybe he might have gone on to recognise that workers may want a say in these things and not just be treated like another piece of company property.

Then again I would guess that he views employees as disposable chattels for which he can set the price and determine their shelf life. He is likely setting "If you don't like it you can leave" to music for increased entertainment value .

Interesting how he uses one of Howard's earliest phrases about the sky falling in, used again recently by Kevin Andrews. Only the conservatives have been mentioning falling skys. Unions and others have only been pointing out what is possible and probable under the new laws.

This guy just proves the unions point.