I'm in the Col Rouge camp here. As a manager, my attitude was that staff were people first, employees second, and that to get the best from them I both had to help them enjoy their employment and feel it was worthwhile, and to feel that they were enhancing their future employment opportunities by working with me (increasing skills etc). I knew that they had alternatives, and while seeking to make working with me attractive, I also encouraged young staff to take other opportunities when it would help their career.

As an employee in the Queensland Public Service, with an ALP government, I found management appalling, eventually decided that with management's attitude my work-related (and other) health problems would deteriorate further unless I resigned, and haven't been able to work since. So I place no faith in the ALP on these issues.

In most places and most industries, demand favours employees, as Col says there are generally alternatives and ACTU-style prescription is harmful to individuals and the overall economy.

In a very different era, my grandfather was a founder of a trade union, most current unions are unhelpful.

Of course a worker can leave a job they don't like and get another job in times of low unemployment or if there is great demand for their skill set.

Yes there are heaps of unskilled part time jobs available in Manly but can you afford to commute into these low paid jobs or get cheap accommodation near Manly?

The reality is that the unemployment rate is a lot higher than the published statistics suggest. The Treasurer is morally bankrupt to say that Australia has a lower unemployment rate than Germany when Australians are defined as being "employed" if they work for 30 minutes in a week, even as a volunteer. In Germany people who work less than 15 hours a week are considered "unemployed".

There are many Australians who find that their skill sets are not in high demand because the work they trained to do has been sent off-shore or because they are the wrong age, over 40 or recent graduates who find the workforce is choked with baby boomers waiting for their superannuation to kick in. I am not saying that those waiting for retirement are lazy or not competent.

More and more Australians are being forced to work for themselves as subcontractors or in their own businesses where the revenues are less than their previous wages.

Now I have no problem with small businesses being unable to offer permanant employment but when government departments outsource their work to private contractors the employees affected face uncertain employment and the government customers have to deal with untrained, incompetent and unsafe service.

The setting up of all these microbusinesses will lead to loss of productivity and loss of quality of life for most Australians.

Hedgehog “Resign, live on thin air. Your a joke Col, and every contribution you make on this topic is absolute fantasy land stuff.”

Live on thin air?
No, because I have4 separate income streams.

Unions do not secure employment, economic factors do.

“Flexibility” is
one of the most significant economic factors.
the antithesis to the “collective bargaining”, which unions demand.

“Collective bargaining”
which insist everyone is paid the same regardless.
which takes the circumstances of one industry and demand parity in a totally different industry which might well be in an entirely different part of an economic cycle.

Fantasy land?

My contribution is based on what I do, not on how I think others should behave.

Fact Land, I resigned from a $200k pa. contract recently because I disagreed with a change in policy.

“Employers choice, thats all there is. Only the dishonest or very foolish continue to argue that its about our economy or enhancing workers lifes.”

Employers are not forced to employ anyone. Rates of Pay are negotiated. Off pay-packet terms, holiday pay, LSL, sick leave, superannuation, maternity leave, bereavement leave, penalty rates, overtime rates etc merely widen the gap between what it “costs” an employer and what the employee receives in a pay-packet.

What it “costs an employer” is what will determine the viability of any business undertaking.

Anyone who thinks that it has ever been any other way is living with the pixies.

Anyone who has worked for a company which has gone belly-up and lost all their “entitlements” would agree that they would have been better off with the cash than the LSL or any other lost / unpaid benefit.

I’m a Joke? I don’t rely on the opinion of the likes of you, pixie!

Maracas, GWB could possibly not afford me. That might be another income stream though, I do write for some select magazines, for free, it helps promote some of my businesses.

Thanks Faustino.

Billie, the unskilled have only themselves to blame, we all left school “unskilled” except, some of us put in and got “skills”.

The entire notion of a worker being free to choose to cash out leave is built on a fundamental fiction.

It presupposes that employer and employee are on equal bargaining terms.

The ACTU's intent is not to prevent anyone from cashing out leave (though this may be the effect). It is to prevent those in the middle and lower reaches of the labour market from being FORCED to cash out their leave unwillingly.

Around 20% of the working population (2 million workers) are unskilled or low skilled. Their labour is never really in short supply and they are easily replaced. Can you imagine a cleaner or janitor being presented with an AWA requiring that 2 weeks annual leave be cashed out saying "No way! Give me my four weeks leave or just try to find yourself another janitor."

These changes will slowly spread through the labour market, their effect being sharpest at the bottom end. Note the situation in the U.S. where a janitor can earn as much as Aust $8 an hour. The level of true poverty.

No one is truly free to choose to cash out leave unless they are also free to choose NOT to cash out their leave. If your kind of labour is in ready supply, it would be laughable to suggest that you can negotiate one-on-one with an employer, you will eventually be forced to accept what is offerd.

Those in the high income brackets are not in need of such protection, and as such I don't see a problem with them being exempt.

For a wealth of veiws on these kind of issues, check ou the your rights at work community forum.

Fozz
you may find that labors legislation for leave is

A minimum of 4 weeks of paid annual leave for each 12 months of service and an additional week for regular shift workers, with no cashing out of leave.

now you can take this which ever way you like but this is what they have, so i can see nowhere this is to regards of forced leave.

So if you have leave you will take it and not be able to cash it out, this is their plan.Which this is their minimum standard.

I am sure all of the part employed science, computer science, engineering, geology, commerce, nursing and teaching graduates feel miffed by you saying that the "unskilled" deserve what they get.

When organisations and governments respond to the market, they are reacting, they are no longer setting the agenda, thus they will always be behind. When a country sings a mantra of "respond to market forces" there in lies the recipe to fall behind those countries that invest in the future and plan for future requirements.

I am not sure what the lead time is to set yourself up as a mortgage broker but it takes 15 to 20 years to train up enough personnel to become a world leader in telecomms, or biochemistry.

If we just respond to market forces we will always be behind, we can't possibly ever be the clever country again.