"If I was unskilled, not very good at my job, not very good at negotiation, I might want a union to hold my hand"
posted by Yabby

My dear crustacean, since when have negotiating skills determined the pay and conditions of the average Australian? 10 years of AWA's pre-workchoices and only 5% of workers chose to negotiate one. Of course the actual amount of negotiation that takes place between employer and employee is arguable to say the least.

Yabby, you know as well as I do that there is a very big difference between having bargaining SKILLS and having bargaining POWER. Without bargaining power to back them up, bargaining skills are little more than bluff and bulldust. You can learn bargaining skills, but you cannot learn bargaining power, it is inherent in the position. This is the unfortunate lot of at least 2 million workers in this country. Their labour is never scarce enough to give them any leverage at the bargaining table. Note that many of those who currently do have bargaining power will not always have it. Much of it will evaporate when the resource boom winds down, leaving them with little more than the hope that their employer is still feeling generous.

I wonder if their bank managers will allow them to "average out" their mortgages?

The Coalition Government only serves one group within the communty that being the big end of town. So why so much spin about workers being members of a Union?

At the last election, we the electorate, were given virtually no information in relation to the ideological mean IR legislation that was going to be unleashed onto us. The legislation was pushed through the Senate very hastily and with a great deal of arrogance. At the last election we were given rubbish about interest rates. Mr. Hockey would no doubt recall that when Mr. Howard was Treasurer that interest rates were exceptionally high. What about all the mortgage sales since the election Mr. Hockey?

Since the last election $55 millions of tax payers monies were squandered in trying to tell us that we should be thankful that benefits earnt over many years would be taken from us. The miners being a group that has done well from AWAs; there being several groups though where the opposite is true.

If the process created by the ironically titled "Work Choices" was so good; then there would be no hesitation in releasing data about the AWAs that have been created.

Fozz, you are clearly from the old British school of "them and us"
and have never in your life been an employer.

I've seen other systems, (Switzerland) where employers realise that
its the best workers who make them the most money, so pay them
accordingly. Fair enough!

I also live in a different part of Australia. We in the West, with
10% of the population, generate 40% of exports, to keep you lot going.
I cannot think of a single friend of mine, who has any kind
of talent, who would bother with an award. Shearers, mechanics, you
name it, if they have talent, they negotiate their own deals, no
need for anybody to hold their hands. But then we are not the
industrial backwater of Vic/NSW :)

If you had ever been an employer, you would know that good workers
are hard to find, under any circumstances. Those with common sense,
a work ethic, an understanding that their welfare is tied up with
that of the employer, are far better to hire then those who turn
up for work drunk, on drugs, don't bother, or watch the clock all day.
Workers who destroy machinery etc are not cheap, no matter what they
are paid by hour.

Smart employers, as distinct from less smart ones, know that top people
are the people to hang on to, and paying them extra is well worth
it for the company, as they generate the profits, not the hangers on.

Good labour is always scarce, but then you've never been an employer
to understand that.

Given that Julia thinks that women don't need advice about how
to live their lives, what makes you think that some workers can't
make their own decisions?

Let those who want and need a union, hold their hands, but let
the rest have choice about how they want to live their lives.
If its good enough for Australian women, it should be good enough
for Australian workers!

Actually Yabby, I do not reside in any "industrial backwater".

I live in booming Queensland, which supplies the other half of the country's current prosperity. My town is one of the country's major outlets for those resources, a home of industrial giants. But I digress.

Yabby, I must repeat: the ability to negotiate a decent living wage and working conditions is beyond the reach of a large portion of Australians. As another poster put it, many simply lack the clout. Not long after workchoices was introduced, my local 24hr service station sacked almost it's entire staff without warning and employed a whole new staff on AWA's. The fact that every sacked staff member was a union member was a liitle suspicious. One of them was photographed holding her recently awarded employee of the month certificate. Where was the ability to negotiate if they could be sacked on a whim and replaced with (even) cheaper labour?

Or the meatworks in the next town that sacked all of it's cleaners and replaced them with visa 457 holders because they are irresistably cheap.

Or, for good measure, an aquaintance who was sacked for arguing with a reduction in pay. And he is a boilermaker - in a resource town screaming for tradies and he still could not negotiate.

My beef here is too long for one post, suffice to say that all the evidence that I have ever seen is that the ability of employees to truly negotiate is a myth. And when the boom winds down (and it will someday) this will be even more telling.

I will return and address your other points later.

The trouble is there are two wages being paid. I don't know how true the numbers are but, I have read that only around 30% of the labour force is unionised. So there is the wage earned by a union worker and the wage earned by everyone else in that relative job market. Why pay six unionised workers to do the job two real workers can do. Why pay four to stand around leaning on their shovels. One of the best jobs I ever had went by the wayside when an employee pressed for a union. We were all told we could have our jobs with future advancement and pay increases as the market developed or we could have our union. The day the union showed up 70 people lost their jobs. Our little plant closed. No longer able to compete in the real world of market forces and real world economy. Today with advances in robotics the labour market is shrinking and so is the power of unions. If a machine and one guy is all it takes to do a job where once it took ten men, the unions loose the power to coerce exorbitant wage and benefit packages. This aint the '70s anymore, and China and India be look'n fer werk

Workchoices is about all who work.
Not just those who are also in unions.
Joe is a small part of this government but represents it well.
He lies with ease, he uses miss information, and refuses to give information that would expose workchoices for what it is.
In posts done here months ago I said Howard and his circus of a government would make changes to workchoices before this election.
Howard said he would not.
He now says he will.
It is too late, he fails to understand the chooks have come home to haunt him.
Lies, endless contempt for the people, AWB the list is endless.
Conservative Australia after election night you will debate this mans failures why not now?