Thinker perhaps you missed the bit where I said I have not had to sack many people. I did however, after unfair dismissal came in, have to terminate a number of people, near the completion of a 3 months trial period. In all but one instance I would have given the person a bit longer to make the grade, if dismissal had not become so difficult, once they became permanent. This was the thing I hated most about management.

Towards the end of my career I developed a reputation as a business saver. I did enjoy bring a company back from the brink, or even going down the slippery slope of bankruptcy, back to viability.

It could be demanding on everybody, when staff numbers were at a minimum, & you were walking a tight rope between paying the bills, & getting the money in to pay them.

I found it was not how much but how you paid people that made them happy. With a company climbing up the slope it was really great to be able to say, "We have increased the turnover by 10% this month, if we can hold that for another 2 months, every one gets a 10% rise". People love feeling they have earned the rise, & have received it as deserved.

T2,

I don't care whether the pig has lipstick or whether she wears a hat, the reality is that for the many thousands of small businesses that employ small numbers of people, the unfair dismissal laws place a huge compliance cost on hiring permanent employees, and many businesses trying to shed employees that are dishonest or abusing substances find themselves blackmailed by labour lawyers threatening extended litigation.

Your argument is rubbish SM, because the entitlements a person can receive by winning an unfair dismissal case are negligible anyway and an employee must have the cost of pursuing it at his disposal. Howard ensured that workers would have little more than a technical recourse, when its comes to UFD or pay claims.

I have documents in my possession regarding shortfalls of award wages paid to me through unpaid work hours in my industry over 15 years, that I presented to Workchoices, whom responded in writing by saying that all the work practices that I described were illegal. They went on to say that I had a right to take legal action to recover my losses at my own cost.

If I ever made these correspondences public I would never work in my industry again.

This very subject is something you can tell me nothing about SM.

Therefore I am not going to let you get away with your mis-information on this subject.

As usual you are ignoring the reason unfair dismissal laws are necessary in the first place.

In order that employees are not displaced through ageism, racism, your not pretty enough, or won't respond to your employers sexual advances, or some other form of discrimination, or because your manager doesn't like you, or perhaps your politics SM. Perhaps they simply want to get rid of you because you are a member of a union. And so on and so forth.

Finally you are talking up the cost of UFD to employers, and its downside overall. In most cases employees could never take the cost, the risk, the stigmata, and the pain of pursuing a UFD claim upon themselves anyway. So it just doesn't happen in most cases anyway.

T2, by your own admission, you have not been an employer, facing the obsticals that have been placed in our way.

UFD cases cost employers more than employees, as they are not making an income while defending their rights.

Now as for our rights as an employer, why can't we choose the best person for the job.

Sometimes you have to go with who you can find a the time, hoping a better worker will come along, much the same as workers will take the job, until something better comes along.

UFD allows emplyees to have their cake, and eat it.

UFD for employees, is also, unfair employment for employers, as they don't have the same rights.

As for the three month trial, you should be able to record a workers efforts, then use that as evidence when they slacken off.

But hey, that would be too balanced for unions and labor.

They are FD laws, without doubt, the worst laws ever introduced.

Introduced by labor, the country stalled, watered down bynthe libs, the cow try boomed, tightened again, some years latter by labor, and guess what, the cow try has stalled again.

What more evidence do you need.

Everyone turns to casual when there is a squeeze on.
Have a look around, this is not confined to AU, the world is broke.
100 Billion wiped off stock in a few days, because Greece can't find a way forward. What has Greece got to do with AU.
They say investers got nervous, so the whole of the country suffers.
Au is seen as a safe haven for investors, we are paying an all-time low for govt borrowed money.
10 year bonds 2.5 % AU Greek 10 year bonds 10%.

T2
The fear campaign run by the unions against work choices neglected to mention that for small companies, the UFD laws were only relaxed for procedural reasons not discrimination, harassment etc. A person could be retrenched without the lengthy negotiations and paperwork required.

The "fair" work act has now meant that retrenching or dismissing staff can be successfully challenged unless a huge amount of paperwork has been correctly completed in minute detail. This has meant that the cost of employing people full time has become far more expensive. While casual labour supposedly has a premium, but the FWA has a far higher premium.

T2, you claim that I can't tell you anything about this subject, but know nothing from the employer's side (who decides how to employ), and the legal problems you have applies equally to the FWA which does not differ for such issues.