The only casualization we should have is the heads of Government Departments. Or at least change them when a new Government gets voted in.

Thinker how can you people be so delusional.

I agree with you that Howard went too far with work choices, & this needed to be addressed, but it is the unfair dismissal laws that caused me to stop hiring any permanent staff.

I also agree with individual, & don't want casual staff, apart from the occasion when short hours or days suit both parties. I have used it on occasions as a trial, moving people up from casual to full time, as positions became available.

Casualization is the bastard child of unfair dismissal.

I have been lucky, & have not had to sack many employs. On the odd occasion when I had made a bad decision in employing someone, the staff, not liking to work with someone who was unpleasant, or bludging on the rest, would get rid of them, they can damn soon make someone want to leave.

Apart from that, it can take many costly months of training to bring an employee up to worth having, why should an employer have to then accept the employee can leave at a weeks notice, but still have to supply employment for life?

Then we have operational requirements. If a marine operation changes from 6 X 100 passenger boats, to 2 X 300 passenger boats, their skippers may not be qualified to run the new boats, & they will definitely not have engineers qualified for the larger engines. Too many skippers & no engineers means a change in staff.

Continued

In the last company I ran we made a conscious decision to limit the number of employees due to problems we saw others having with unfair dismissal laws.

We had good market penetration in QLD, NSW & SA. Victoria & WA were poor, due to previous poor choice of personal. We decided not to bother with these markets due to difficulty of getting rid of people, if we made further bad choices, & the high costs if unsuccessful.

We closed the offices before unfair dismissal made this too expensive, & serviced a few major customers from head office. This proved a very good choice, when one of those recessions "we had to have" made survival quite difficult.

Unfair dismissal really means no dismissal because the jobs that would have been available, just never exist. Business people will no longer "give it a go" if the cost of an unsuccessful attempt at something is just too expensive, with the extra costs of unfair dismissal, particularly when there is nothing unfair about it, except to the employer.

I have witnessed the practice of unfair dismissal. We had several good people unfairly dismissed by useless bureaucrats in Qld Government Departments by the very Government who got a lot of mileage out of pretending unfair dismissal was in aid of the unfairly dismissed. In actual fact it is a disgusting con by the unfair to dismiss good people.

Other than your opening "you people" remark Hasbeen, I generally empathise with the rest of your post. (Only because I'm not sure of which you people you mean). If you mean lefties I would "not" consider myself one of those. Politically I am basically a civil libertarian Hasbeen.

In my mind there has to be some balance, when it comes to the employee/employer relationships.

Primarily because the individual's capacity to flourish at his own level is negated, when his incentive over time served, is pallid or non existent, in short he cant actually benefit from working harder, or more demanding hours, in the long run.

In my own experience Hasbeen, I have for the most part employed myself, but over the last 15 yrs I have been employed. I am lucky to have an adaptable skill set and for the most part haven't had to worry about keeping my job.

As for the amount of productivity I have personally created in my life as an employee, there is a yawning chasm between the value of this productivity for my employer, ("a considerable percentage of this wealth incremental for my employer I might add"), and the amount I have been paid for that, at the end of the day. Such are the conditions in the industry in which I am employed, so changing employers is not an easy option, in fact you may find yourself out of the fat and into the fire economically, having been employed on a raft of golden promises alone, after being poached.

If the underlying principal of being paid well, being respected by your employer through loyalty and application, is missing, and is replaced by a revolving door of faces at your local workplace, it is hard to place belief in this as a worthy and loyal employee.

I feel sure we both agree on this Hasbeen.

Wobbles, casual pay rates are between 21 and 25% higher, per hour, than perm. This is in lue of sick leave and holiday pay.

The fact that many workers blow it all and save nothing for tha rainy day, is nit the employers fault.

As for UFD, I agree with has been there.

Having been an employer myself, 88 to 2011, hi have seen a lot of changes.

Extended trading hours is one that rocked small traders, as it played into the hands of the majors.

Initially, late night and Sunday trading were slow and, the majors simply cut back on night fill staff and restocked many of the shelves between 5 and 9 pm.

Nowadays, most week nights are quite busy as people can come home from work, watch the news, have dinner then go shopping.

Pre extended hours, we could pretty much guarantee our turnover, which meant we could budget better and plan rosters better.

Now, some afternoons small retailers get smashed and find themselves under staffed, while on other days they literally stand around picking their noses.

So extended trading is another contributor to casual hours.

But without a doubt, the largest impact in my time was UFD.

I saw many one man businesses pop up as they were not game to employ.

Now unless you have been there you really don't know, but of cause you can use the stats, the same ones that say we have 4.9% unemployment.

DREAM ON,