Howard is only practising what he has preached since he was in the Young Liberals, he hates working people, and as he is about to retire on Lord knows how much superanuation, he expects the low income worker to work on the minimum wage or less. Very difficult to survive on especially if you have children to feed clothe and educate, millionaire enconomists who back these reforms have no idea what it's like to live in our world

SHONGA
I feel your post is plain irresponsible. I seriously doubt that J.H. 'hates' working people.. in the same way that Kim Beasly is hardly likely to 'hate' Employers. Your post sound childish, emotive and simply appears to be either sour grapes or pushing an agenda.

What I find sad about your post and many others like it, is the abject lack of recognition of the reality of the competitive world we live in now.

All you can see is "I want a better deal". You neglect the FRAMEWORK in which a better deal can be achieved.

Lets cut to the chase. Many of the existing IR conditions which are so loosely called 'workers rights' are in fact the gains made by unions led by people who gained their positions on unsustainable promises of better conditions who only promised thus to gain power and perhaps their $100k packages ? I would love to know the Salary of various Union organizers and officials.

Even more sad, that those promises were predicated on the greed of people.. I'm sure there were many who could see how such things as $20/hour for process work my son currently gets are not sustainable in the auto industry, but they would have been howled down by those who could just see the money, rather than a longer term employment.

Knowing what I do about Accountants in the auto industry, how long do you think it will be before labor rates like that are seen for what they are... making the 'cost of sales' too high and the product less competitive.

When the product is less competitive, less people buy it, they buy a different one, and then...what happens to the jobs ? well then we start hearing about 'downsizing/consolidation/redunancies' etc etc..

Are you following me here ? I sure hope so, because if not, you will wake up one day and suddenly there will be no job, no money and no life.. and your eyes will glaze over as you realize there is not squat you or anyone else can do about it.

P.S... I absolutely do take your point about Mr Howards retirement package and the same goes for the obscene salary packages of the 'MBA' CEO's who can't wait to put all their 'outsourcing to Asia' lessons into practice, and 'cut costs'.

They are especially desirous of doing so because a better bottom line means a chunkier bonus.. again.. greed.

So, the truth is, most of our industrial relations at both ends of the spectrum, are characterized by GREEEEEED.

Its shameful, disgusting and outrageous.

A CALL TO REPENTANCE.

I would go so far as to describe the Salary packages of CEO's and the manipulation to 'keep power' of Unions as 'sin'. And there is just ONE solution to 'sin' .. its repentance.

Greed and 'me me me-ism' has now almost completely overtaken our national character, its time we put it right, and turned around.

No offense intended with my other post, I'm just telling it like it appears, with honesty.

Boaz, you seem to be quite bitterly against the idea of set minimum conditions. You seem to be arguing across several threads that because people in developing countries are happy with less, that we should be too. Surely our efforts would be better put into raising standards with other people, rather than bringing our own down?

Perhaps as an employer you are generous and flexible with your staff, but the fact of the matter is that many are not. Minimum conditions are there to prevent a race to the bottom. We cannot compete with wage costs with China and India, as you have pointed out many times. But nor should we try.

These reforms seem determined to, long term, erase even the idea that people at the bottom of the heap deserve certain standards.

I can see from the employer's perspective, especially in a small business, that during downtimes it must be difficult to justify why you have people doing 'busywork', and taking up your take-home profits. But making everyone casualised (and as a casual worker for six years I know that has more disadvantages than benefits), or insecure in their positions hardly promotes a productive workforce.

People are hardly going to be dedicated to a company when they know that they can be made redundant at any time.

I have recently re-read "Life and Work" by Charles Birch and David Paul. I recommend it to all- it highlights that people genuinely give more to their employers when they feel they are valued, both by their pay and their conditions, and shows that productivity actually drops when people are worried and feel uncertain about their conditions.

I fail to see, in light of this, and the very dubious economic arguments around these new laws, that the government is proposing anything that will aid our society. For all their talk about supporting Australian values in schools etc, they are undermining Aussie 'long weekend barbeque' culture even more.

Boaz writes "Knowing what I do about Accountants in the auto industry, how long do you think it will be before labor rates like that are seen for what they are... making the 'cost of sales' too high and the product less competitive.

When the product is less competitive, less people buy it, they buy a different one, and then...what happens to the jobs ? well then we start hearing about 'downsizing/consolidation/redunancies' etc etc.."

Labour rates seem to be the focus and excuse used to downsize etc... I also see lack of innovation (creating new products) and the inability to come up with value adds (if you can't beat them on price, beat them on value for money) as contributors to downsizing etc...

To my way of thinking if we had more clever people in business there would be no talk of job loss and downsizing etc...

Perhaps we stand a better chance of long term sustained growth if the idiots went bust.

Valerie

David, Boaz, I appreciate your honesty, but our family lives on $350.00 per week, below the poverty line, not even the minimum wage, so if I sound a bit bitter, it is only because I am. I find it strange to say the least how the same companies who howl poor when the average working person asks for a pay rise, and a few months later gives the C.E.O. A PAY RISE, C.E.O.'s of Australia's top 30 companies have had a 44% increase this year alone. And the workers organisations the Unions cop stick for asking for $20.00 per week, or 3% increase, come on David, you know and I know that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. John Howard has always "hated" the working class, always has wanted to break working people industrial organisations, have you noticed an attack from him on the employers industrial organisations e.g. Australian Business Limited, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the AMA, NO, AND YOU NEVER WILL. You may nbe a small business person David, and that can be a hard road also, I don't deny that, however working people have only one comodity to sell, their labour, and of course we want the most we can get for it, to feed our children, clothe our children, and educate our children. We would also like to work to live, not live to work, because we {as strange as it may seem} like to spend time with our family, as a family, take us out of the family to work all the time, and soon you have a social promlem of youth roaming the streets, getting up to mischief, I don't want that David, and I dare say you don't want that, so let's calm down a little, everybody knows that John Howard has always done the bidding of big business, it's no secret, only to the ignorant, who don't want to know, of course pro big business means anti worker.