Lexi,

Interesting comment.

I think when we are young we often see our seniors as narrow minded. I certainly did. Fortunately youth is not an incurable disease.

My experience over the years is at odds with some of your comments on background being cause of many of our social failings today.

If someone wants enough they will achieve even if it is at a relatively simple level. I suspect many today do not want enough and are not willing to put themselves out to achieve in any real way. No need.

I also appreciate sometimes ones luck runs out and a helping hand is needed. I have been there and hopefully I have reciprocated over the years.

I guess one can never really comment with any surety unless you have walked in anothers shoes but we can try to understand where they are coming from.

I think we have taken Bellys topic off track. Best we return.

Take it easy.

SD

From my own experience lately , I am owed money by my previous employer, that I recently left for greener pastures. It is unclear that I will ever receive my remuneration.

From my new compatriots I have learned that my new employer also does not like to pay. And getting paid specifically for your productivity, is the most difficult too extract, apparently. I am yet to find this out having only completed my second week.

My sister in a different industry recently had to attend a 4 week vigil beside her son's hospital bed, (he was critical after a car accident), she now owes her employer holiday pay in a sort of reverse in-lieau situation he has applied, even though she has worked for this employer for 15 years without a days compassionate or bereavement leave. Something she is fully entitled too according too her award.

My grandson told me today about his "commission only job" in which he made 4 sales over the last 2 weeks and now no longer has the job, ( I didn't ask why ?), and he will not be paid anything in his understanding. After travelling 14 days into the CBD and back at his own expense by public transport.

Now does this sound like the Australian way of life we know and believe in ?.

No it doesn't and it isn't, and these sorts of practices are now rife, in Australian small and medium businesses across the land from my own experience in retail sales. It doesn't matter what the unfair individual contract says that most employees have been basically forced accept to retain their positions. And the end of the day no one in Gov't is policing what little rights left that exist in the workplace for the individual today

And therefore unions become relevant again, but in todays politically and economically distorted Australia, collective action is only fashionably done during protests or elections, and never in the industrial arena. Heaven forbid a fair deal for Australian working people today, is thought negative for business and the economy, and portrayed as such by our leadership and the commentariat.

Economic voodoo I say. The notion of the trickle down effect is the all time, most bogus of economic myths ever invented.

As for Wages/Unions/Workplaces Belly, I think it's a shambles today with most working people out of pocket, facing uncertainty and rising artificial inflation in the essential services area. I use fuel as an example. The fuel pricing yoyo we see is the preferred business model of the distributors, not related too the tax element, or the actual cost.

It is out of control and doing a productive days work won't fix it. Incentive ?, gone with the Aussie way of life.

Lexi,
i watched the same TV show & that young chap didn't say what you're quoting. He said he found many in the party being anti-intellectual not anti education. There's no comparison between an educated person & an intellectual. Educated people are part of the back bone of a society whereas intellectuals are largely ineffectuals & not part of the back bone but rather the unpleasant end of the digestive system.

yabby as always I like you, but you are not letting truth get in the way of a form of bigotry.
Let us look backward for a time.
The birth of Unions and why they came about.
Both bad behavior of SOME UNIONS today, and the idea that workers should be used and disposed of [still alive in some] came from.
England at the start of the industrial revolution called them serfs.
Near property of the Lords and Lady's,they lived on land owned by them farmed first for them and are not fail to take the hat of and hold it over their heart in the presents of them.
TODPUDDLE MARTERS find a link read about the dreadful crime they committed,wanting better!
Industrial Revelation, steam power bought serfs in to town, children 7 years of age into coal mines to work till death.
Do not avoid this truth, great pain/miss use of/even death and suffering followed.
Still! it was thought workers, considered as property, could be used then thrown away.
OH we say! BELLY WAKE UP ITS OLD HISTORY!
Read now the History of the coal Fields dispute in the Hunter valley NSW.
My spelling may be wrong but it is the Rothbury Riot.
Find it read it, see the single tin of camp pie for a family at Christmas.
Here how a Judge ruled in favor of the owner of that mine,INFAMOUSLY!
See how that judge ,dog still today! inherited those mines! on the death of his benefactor.
If you care about truth see to the police, sent into bash and flog intimidate even the wives of those miners.
Read about the Rothbery riot then the birth place of Australian Unions, Eureka stockade!
All union propaganda?
Do we understand the impacts of these actions, the power and thinking of bad bosses and big capital gave birth not only to unions but things like communism.
Socialism, And in time, for a time, bought down then now returning class system.

I want, staying in the past talk of the first world war.
To focus on its impacts even today on unions/workers/bosses.
The world British Empire no less than any other was still a place that saw under classes as property.
Queen Victoria had spread her family influence to every Royal family in Europe, we still lived in a world that was tribal/patriotic and loyal to its tribal leaders in this case Royalty.
In a family feud we saw millions die needlessly and heedlessly in the hands of upper class twits who knew nothing of what they did.
And placed more value on a painting in their rich home than those troops.

The aftermath broke down the British class system, in part, and planted two seeds.
Unionism a wish to share a better life,infected some times with radicalism communism,and a dream of one world, a system workers them selves today, reject.
And power and privilege, still has the wish to control and the ability to get those it wants to control to join its fight.
As in every thing,time changes.
Reality is today we have not got to the end of evolution of industrial relations.
OH yes radicals, on both sides will say I am wrong, but no I am not.
Problems exist,
Do we want it for humanity or just our country.
Greed rules still, those dragging us down, on every side, care little for fairness.
So are we ok with a forever under class?
Look hard at America Europe China India Russia.
Has the road to wealth got to be paved with the body's of more and more true poor? truly neglected.
The future must be better,is the answer truly reducing workers wages and living conditions.
Is it truly grabbing the straws of one union one group 1 in 5 workers and defaming the whole.
Will reducing the wages be good for every one?
Who consumes if we can not?
One day we can talk about a world that sees as it truly is today increasing understanding between bosses and workers and true progress can be made.