The trend towards "CONTRACTing", "CONTRACTors" and "CONTRACTs" gives light to how many lawyers we have representing us in parliament.

Australians do not need anymore lawyers looking after their supposed National Interest.

The tone of Bob’s article makes IR sound wonderful and cosy. It is great for some people, they being employers. For a significant proportion of the population the new IR laws spell hell. Prior to the new laws being invoked, an abattoir in my State sought to make its workforce change from being workers to contractors. When analysed further it has become apparent that the workers were far worse off, they lost their entitlements and were paid less; creating sweat shop conditions.

The IR laws were swept through Federal Parliament in an inept manner as legitimate concerns were ignored, no glossing over the new IR regime by Bob in a Pollyannaish manner is not going to clear the underlying stench of working people being sold a pup. The IR legislation was swept through Parliament with no real debate, the electorate was poorly treated through this process; and so, comments made supporting IR will be treated with great mistrust. The gremlins will continue to roll out of the woodwork as unexpected consequences occur.

Sorry Bob, I think it's you who is ignoring the real world, and the facts, rather than Mr Beazley. I have 4 different experiences with contracting in the real world; 4 different fields, and they have all been negative.

The first is in my own field of IT; this has been commented on a fair bit already in this thread, so I won't go into any further.

The second & third are in the blue collar field, I have relatives who all work in the field of contracted labour for concreters, they are screwed royally by their quasi-employer on both conditions and income, and when one of them got sick recently there was NOTHING for him, all his income had been used week to week! He couldn't even get the "dole" as he was still "working".

The same is true of the other blue collar field I have experience with, contract carpet & vinyl layers. Sure they make good money, but the working life in this field is short. Recently one of the older guys I know had to give it up. Again, he had NOTHING! No super, no savings and NO OTHER SKILLS, at 45 no less! (As much his fault as the system's, but it lends the air of a lie to your Aussies are smarter now line of argument)

My 4th example shows this even further. I was part owner/manager of a small business, we originally used a franchise/contractor system with our workers but within 2 to 3 years out of 9 contractors who stayed with us throughout the process 7 had run their businesses into the ground through bad management and were in a debt spiral with us just buying the stock they needed to make a living each week. So we bought all the business back from them and made them all employees. (Which, I might add, worked out much better for everyone concerned) Out of the 7 only 1 had enough assets in the buy-back to cover their debt to us.

Your article is a sham with no evidence, and contracting is a disaster!

If Bob's puffery of the greatness of being an employee had some credibility why isn't Bob an employee?
Just choosing to be an employer goes against Bob's argument.
Actions speak louder than words and Bob's actions choose to be an employer and not an employee.
Why is that? Why is that? Why is that? Just why is that?

I consider the government's new industrial relations laws badly thought out, ideologically based and of no benefit in contributing to productivity increase in Australia.

By the same token, some of the people critical of Bob Day's piece are ideologically driven and ignore the evidence.

Day has a home building company. This is an industry that has traditionally run on a contractor and subcontractor structure, so he knows something whereof he writes.

There is though a fundamental difference between how the homebuilding industry has been structured and the new individual contract IR structure.

Like billie, I too have worked in IT with contractors, outsource service providers and salaried employees. In that context, what (s)he says is correct: contractors don't train younger folk. They also tend not to buy into the company's culture and objectives and disdain "office politics" and "bullsh*t". When the job market is buoyant, contractors can earn substantially more than permanent staff. When it stalls, they scuttle round, looking for permanent jobs.

But the home building industry is not quite like this. There are sole practitioners, but there are also many small firms, of maybe 2 or 3 or half a dozen tradespeople who will take on an apprentice or two. Within the firm, traditional employment relationships exist.

There are many things you can criticise about the structure.

In recent years as demonstrated by the current shortage, it has failed to train as many apprentices as are needed. Good tradespeople are not all good business managers and are frequently severely undercapitalised. hadz alludes to this in his fourth example.

When one of these tiny enterprises fails, there are rarely assets to satisfy creditors or help the principals to recover. If a fraudulent or incompetent builder creates some sort of disaster, customers have little chance of redress.

Even so, with all its warts it seems to be a system that delivers pedestrian homes, most times, efficiently, at a keen price.

But is this the new Howard model, Bob?

I don't think so.

Hadz,
I agree. I've seen the Wonderful World of Contracting from both sides.
My background is in telecommunications but I spent a period doing pay TV installation and casual telecoms installation work.

What I learned was the only way to survive was to "get in, get out, get paid". The margins are so low that you have to do shoddy work in order to break even, let alone make a living. It's the same in every industry I see. I'm "old-school" and this concept didn't sit well with me so I got out of it as fast as I could.

Despite all the cheerful rhetoric from companies contracting their work out, they only get what they pay for.

The Contractor doesn't care if the Company he's working for succeeds or fails, only if he/she gets paid.

As Keating said about life in Canberra, "if you want loyalty, get a dog".

Benefits from this approach are only short-term.