Frank, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't serious.

Thanks for the info, I'll take a look through it.

"• earn on average $118 a week more than non-union employees in similar jobs;
• get better sick leave and holiday leave entitlements;
• are more likely to receive long service leave and paid maternity leave;
• are safer at work;
• are better trained, have better working conditions and more job security."

Earn an average $118 per week more than non union members in similar jobs......honestly? Seeing as though I'm having difficulty finding that info in your links can you point me to it? Thanks.

I also have a lot of difficulty believing union memebrs are safer at work. Why and how? Or whether thhey are better trained and have better work conditions. Why would that be so?

And I'm serious so please don't ask again.

Frank, the following quote is from your ABS link.

"Almost three-quarters (73%) of employees had paid leave entitlements in August 2006 (i.e. were entitled to paid holiday leave and/or paid sick leave in their main job). The proportion of full-time employees with paid leave entitlements was 86%, compared with 43% of part-time employees. A higher proportion of male employees had paid leave entitlements than female employees (76% compared with 70%)."

Yet only 22% are union members. These figures don't tally with your claim that union members enjoy better conditions than non-union members. You sure you haven't just thrown a few links my way without checking that they contain evidence of your claims? I'm still willing to acknowledge the truth of your claims providing you can make the evidence available. Want to try again?

Ditch

I’m not here to be your research assistant, but I’ll ‘try again’ at your earnest request. Look in the first supplied reference.

You go on to say you have “a lot of difficulty believing union members are safer at work”. It’s not rocket science. Unions have led the way on workplace safety laws. It is unions who blow the whistle on unsafe practices. The laws allow union inspections of workplace safety.

Workers who are backed by unions are more likely than non-unionists to complain if workplaces are unsafe. Union members are better trained in OH&S and typically, after such training, a unionist in each workplace is a designated OH&S officer.

All of this is set out in the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation (http://www.ohs.anu.edu.au/ohs/index.php ) which is funded by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council, endorsed by the Workplace Relations Ministers Council (Including Jo Hockey).

Unions publish OH&S Fact Sheets and advice on related topics like workplace bullying, stress at work, working in heat, fatigue, and screen-based work. (http://www.actu.asn.au/HelpatWork/OccupationalHealthSafety/Helpandresources/default.aspx)

Non-union workers have to rely on the conscience of employers. When self-interest is running in the race, back it every time.

The World Bank, hardly a radical organisation, said: “Studies in industrial countries indicate that the role of labour unions in ensuring compliance with health and safety standards is often an important one.” (http://www.hazards.org/unioneffect/features.htm)

Your quote from the ABS link shows your misunderstanding of the basis for comparison between union and non-union members.

On more general data you might like to read:

Pittard, M. (2006) ‘Back to the Future: Termination of Employment Under the WorkChoices Legislation’, Australian Journal of Labour Law, 19.

Plowman, D. and Preston, A. (2006) ‘The New Industrial Relations: Portents for the Low Paid’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, 56: 224 – 242

Colin Fenwick (Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, Melbourne University), “How Low Can You Go? Minimum Working Conditions Under Australia's New Labour Laws”, Economic & Labour Relations Review, (16(2) 85, 2006) (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELRRev/2006/5.html)

FrankGol, we will continue to disagree on this, I'm afraid.

>>...I haven’t told you what unions do that management don’t... unions' prime role is to protect and further the interests of their members.<<

Management's primary role is to understand and cater for the interests and aspirations of the employees in their care. This involves treating them as individuals, as opposed to cattle. One byre fits all, all fodder to be the same, regardless of their differences and so on.

People have different aspirations, mental and physical capabilities and domestic circumstances, and these need to be taken into account when determining the tasks that they are able to cope with, and are to be rewarded for.

Furthermore, these characteristics will change over time, so the deal you do today with a happily married man with a wife and two kids, might need to adapt to that of a man going through a messy divorce and all its accompanying joint-custody disasters.

As it would for a woman, you need to work through lifestages including motherhood, even the other half of the situation of the guy in the previous paragraph.

This is management's task. It need not, should not, be delegated to a third party, whose interests extend only to the collective noun "employees".

The rest of your list simply confirms the collective nature of unions' work - health and safety, government lobbying etc. - or is makework - "negotiate consumer discounts for members".

And I too would like to see the evidence - not just another statement of the same "fact" - of your assertion that unionists "earn on average $118 a week more than non-union employees in similar jobs".

I could find no corroboration of this in any available statistics. Just saying something doesn't make it true, you know.

Also, comparing unions to self-obsessed jobs-for-the-boys talking-shops such as the ABA, BCA etc. simply reinforces my point. These are also outdated dinosaurs, existing only as a perceived counterweight to the union movement. That they perform no other visible function only highlights their self-centred, wasteful processes for what they are.

"I’m not here to be your research assistant, but I’ll ‘try again’ at your earnest request. Look in the first supplied reference."

For what? Evidence that union members earn $118 / week more than non members? You claim it to be so you supply the evidence. I'm not here to be YOUR research assistant Frank. There is no support for your claim in your link.

As for safety, you claim union members are safer at work than non members. Nonsense. There are not two distinct sets of safety standards for employees. Surely you cannot have been asserting that this was the case.

However I see that you have altered this claim to one that now states that unions have led the way in work safety reforms. That is a whole lot different from your original claim. And a unionist does not have to be designated as O,H&S officer.

"Non-union workers have to rely on the conscience of employers. When self-interest is running in the race, back it every time."

Again, wrong. All workers are under the same set of guidelines when it comes to safety. To claim that unions have worked hard to make workplace reforms is one thing but to claim members and non members have different standards is absurd.

"Your quote from the ABS link shows your misunderstanding of the basis for comparison between union and non-union members."

Oh really. How so? You explain to me just what it is that I have misunderstood and what is the basis for comparison between members and non-members?

You like to make broad sweeping statements and claims without the evdence to back them up Frank. If you had read my previous posts in this thread you would have seen that I was not anti union and acknowleged their historical contribution to today's working conditions. What I object to though is rash claims made in support of any side of the argument that are false, and when asking for evidence am fed links to sites that don't offer what you claim they to.