Shintaro,
I suspect you're not enlightened on Council amalgamation hence your advise.

In my experience, the good outweight the bad by a very, very long margin, at least in small business, where the management ahs a direct personal stake in the business doing well.

True/Correct Antiseptic.

The fact that you experienced life as an employee in the aforementioned situations obviously has contributed to you being a fair and honest person retaining your long term staff [something you stated previously on a thread a while back]Antiseptic.

And yet!.....No-one looks at the leaders of the country!...Oh dear:)

BLUE

And yet!.....No-one looks at the leaders of the country!...Oh dear:)
Deep-Blue,
Whenever someone does so with a sober view you lot get all uptight & defensive ? You really should make up your mind.

The good employers probably do outweight the bad but not in all industry sectors but I think it is improving while unemployment figures remain low.

The childcare sector has improved conditions and wages (to some extent) to attact more people to the industry but if the environment was reversed and unemployment was high, I doubt if there would be much impetus to pay more fairly given the important nature of the role. That is just one example.

The same problem exists in the aged care industry and cleaning sector although in both those the trend has been to import cheap labour rather than rethink wage scales to attract applicants.

A healthy economy should set the conditions for even the lowest wage to be a realistic 'living wage' in conjunction with improvements in red tape and other burdens to small businesses.

Allowing random contracts and deals does not aid in this principle except as mentioned previously in specialist niche industries and skill sets like IT.

Pelican, the childcare sector is very heavily subsidised and regulated. It doesn't represent the small business sector as a whole, or business generally. You are right thoigh, in that since it is heavily subsidised in order to allow women of childbearing age to take up the burden created by the generational demographic situation, then once that situation is resolved in a few years, there will be a surplus of workers and so the subsidy will not be required. It will be reduced as "unaffordable", which it already is, really, but thanks the mining boom we aren't seeing that as properly apparent.

It's a very good example of a system control that can be easily applied at any time. All it takes is the will to apply it. The death of enough elderly products of the baby boom will provide the incentive for that politial will to be exercised.

The same applies to a great many policies that purport to be based on Feminist precepts. Once the need for female workers decreases, so will the justification for the policy.