“There is simply no reason at all to impose a prescriptive formula of “thou shalt nots” where a flexible approach will deliver what is best for an individual worker according to their own circumstances.”

Employers employ Employee’s to produce. As every employer knows, you get better performance from an employee who has a sense of participation than one who feels he or she is merely a cog in an uncaring machine.

These days of jobs-a-plenty, regardless of age, anyone can find something which pays, provided they are "flexible".

The role of unions is redundant. A contract of employment has always been between an employee and employer. It does not need two arbiters to participate in its structuring.

Two arbiters?

Arbiter 1 is government. Defining and passing statutes which go back over 200 years and regulate employment conditions and can be said to be, since it relies on public support to get elected, independent and above any sectorial interest.

Arbiter 2 a union. These agents seek to oversee and intervene in the engineering of employment contracts for whose benefit? The employees; or their own?

Why have these minimums?

We are not slaves. If the deal does not suite us then resign. If the employer is not being “fair”, do not give him the benefit of your effort, resign.

Australia lives in a global economy. Setting inappropriate and inflexible work regulations benefits only our competitors. Whilst Australia has a workforce specific technological and attitudinal attributes, hindering those attributes with a bunch of paternalistic dictates from trades hall, which merely force to average cost per hour up, without direct benefit to the individual worker, works against the interest of employees.

ChrisC “The employee should have the right to refuse any and all overtime.”

If you don’t like your deal, resign. That works for me, always has done.

Resign, live on thin air. Your a joke Col, and every contribution you make on this topic is absolute fantasy land stuff.History shows us that presciptive minimums need to be in place.In its absence exploitation and a race to the bottom occurs. Those who dont learn from history are destined to repeat it. I for one have no sympathy for any worker who swallows this Federal Govt's. guff about choice, so enthusiasticly peddalled by Col.Employers choice, thats all there is. Only the dishonest or very foolish continue to argue that its about our economy or enhancing workers lifes.

Response to Michael Southern Cross:

The NCC/DLP successfully imposed a Liberal Party Government on this Country through the Menzies era until it's collapse. The DLP divided workers not united them.Their 'morals' were merely an extension of Catholic Dogma through it's architect, B.A.Santamaria, a passionate anti-communist... Family First is a renewed attempt to turn Australia away from secular Government and separation of religion & State. The last thing we need is a return to the bad old days when the Red Bogey was used to frighten people. Now we have Terrorism, anti-Islam rhetoric and fear of Asylum Seeker Refugees in place of that strategy.
The Union Movement embraces Workers of ALL Religious beliefs and for it to successfully act on behalf of ALL WOrkers it does not need to be restricted by sectarian dogma.
The DLP has made a return to the political arena in Australia in a recent state election and no doubt it will continue to peddle its old cold war rhetoric in the new, anti-terrotism climate created by the Howard Government. Historically, it's presence merely served to perpetuate the Liberal National Party coalition agenda, Not the advancement of Australian Workers COnditions.

Love your work Maracas, so cogent, so succinct.

For Col Rouge:

With the neo conservative spin you employ you could expect an offer from G.W.Bush to replace David Frum as his speech writer.

Maracas,

There is not now and never has been such a creature as the NCC/DLP. There was and still is an NCC. There was a separate organization, the DLP, which contained both pro- and anti-NCC members and which voted to disband in 1978. There is a new DLP, which was formed by those members of the original DLP who could not accept the decision to disband and which I gather shares the philosophy of the original DLP. This new DLP has one MLC in Victoria.

The DLP was the Democratic Labor Party and it took the Labor part of its name seriously. It was founded by members of the ALP expelled in 1955 when Doctor Evatt launched an attack on the anti-communist members of the Victorian branch. This was at time when hundreds of millions of people throughout the world were enslaved by communist tyranny. It did not “impose' a Liberal government on Australia. It recommended that its voters give their second preferences to the Liberals as a strategy of forcing the ALP to reform, which it eventually did.

The DLP stood for the family, unionism, welfare, the environment, support for asylum seekers and a whole host of causes that today would be regarded as left-wing.

The new DLP did a preference deal with the ALP under which DLP preferences went to the number 4 ALP candidate in Western Metropolitan, the number 3 ALP candidate in Northern Metropolitan and to the ALP in South-East Metropolitan while ALP preferences helped elect the one DLP MLC. This was a deliberate conscious and partly successful strategy by the ALP, which is not stuck in 1955, to prevent its being dependent on the Greens in the Legislative Council. In the only vote held so far, the DLP voted with the ALP. I expect that both Labor parties will vote together 70 per cent of the time.

DLP senators would have voted against both the current IR laws and the first set brought in with Democrat support 10 years ago. They would have been fiercely opposed to the anti-family agenda of the Howard government.