Hasbeen,

Yes, sorry, I did misunderstand, although not intentionally.

I'm not wholly up on car manufacturing, but seem to recall that Germany pays its car workers a reasonable wage and yet maintains a car industry...perhaps you can enlighten me more.

The other point I'd make, while we're comparing the UK to Oz, is that in the wake of the GFC the UK has had a Tory govt, austerity, etc...and now has Foodbanks galore and a debt to GDP ratio of around 86%.

Australia, on the other hand, under a Labor stimulus for the equivalent period, has low debt to GDP ratio of around 11 %.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/3727694/data/possum-graph-8-government-debt-as-gdp-data.jpg

Funny old world....

Butch, in 2008 Labor with Gillard as Minister put before Fair Work a request for Award Modernisation. I have read that request in detail, it was not a request for higher wages or better conditions for employees, but rather a request that a consolation of awards take place. In part it reads;

"must be simple to understand and easy to apply, and must reduce the regulatory burden on business"

"must be economically sustainable and promote flexible modern work practices and the efficient and productive performance of work"

"(must not) disadvantage employees"

"(must not) increase costs for employers"

How this impacted on your brother, I can't say, I don't know under what conditions your brother's business were operating prior to the implementation of award consolidation by Fair Work.

Please note when I said.
"conditions of employment through awards or agreements are something that are determined by collective bargaining and then ratified by an independent umpire. What could be fairer than that?"
You respond by jumping in and claiming Gillard done this, Gillard done that. When in fact the Labor government done no more than put a request before Fair Work which then had the task to act in the best interests of both employee and employer. what could be fairer than that.

Individual agreements are no more than a ruse to reducing wages and conditions. flexibility is a euphemism used for reaching that goal.

Dear Paul,

<<Individual agreements are no more than a ruse to reducing wages and conditions.>>

This of course is a misnomer, not because of such-and-such wages/conditions, but because companies/corporations are not individuals!

Individual agreements are between two individuals - and as such must not be restricted.
There is however nothing principally wrong about restricting companies, because companies are unnatural constructs, not sentient beings.

As for individuals who seek to offer their services to companies but require their own unique/unusual conditions, surely you don't want to deny them that ability, so perhaps the way to go for them is to sign a truly individual agreement with a specific person within the company rather than with a faceless entity.

(even better, the state should not encourage incorporation in the first place)

<<Butch, in 2008 Labor with Gillard as Minister put before Fair Work a request for Award Modernisation.>>

Throughout her career, Gillard was seeking to enforce her modernity in all areas of life, hammering anyone who does not find happiness in this particular lifestyle.

It seems that modernism has no place for individualism, but rather, in order to increase efficiency and the number of humans the earth can simultaneously support, it seeks to streamline our lives and turn us into cogs in the wheel. Yes, it makes us fatter, but fat ants are still ants.

Where do you get this stuff Paul? It appears that the agreements Ford Holden & Toyota were more about ridiculously high wages & featherbedding than reducing wages, hence the loss of those industries.

Poirot, it was not only the car industry, but most UK manufacturing industry. Nor did it seem like it had much to do with workers wages, but with union leaders bloody mindedness, & with some communist sympathies. Check out Red Ted.

Triumph, my favorite car maker, was destroyed by a 9 month strike. It effectively destroyed their US market. Workers have nothing to gain from such a strike, only the union leaders, & activists. It was not much later there were no jobs.

I saw the same thing during the building of the Gladstone power plant. The workers on a 3 month job had been on strike for 3 weeks. No increase in pay was going to make them better off after that, but union bosses wanted to prolong the strike for their own ends. It was not surprising they had Pommy accents.

Government subsidies did not help, they came with too many strings.
Rootes were given a grant to build a new factory, to build a new small car, the IMP. However they had to locate it in an area of high unemployment, Liverpool I think it was.

Workers had no car building experience, so the cars were poorly built, & the freight cost of getting bits to & from were enormous. Rootes were bought by Chrysler as they failed.

There was even active sabotage in some factories, which I don't think has got to here. A friend, a mechanic in a Morris dealership in London at the time, told me they had to pull the gearboxes out, & remove loose nuts & bolts placed in them to cause failure, before they sold the cars.

Continued.

Rootes gave a mate & I an IMP to run in the Bathurst 500 in 1964. The car had driven only 17 miles to my workshop, when we stripped it to prepare it for racing. We found a full dessert spoon full of iron filings in the camshaft, & all the bearings severely damaged by this swarf.

There is no way that much could find it's way into the camshaft, unless put there intentionally, with a small funnel. Those engines came from the UK that way.

It is not hard to detect the same level of hate, in some of the posters here, of left & green persuasion. I have often wondered if this hate comes naturally, or is instilled by manipulative leaders.

Germany was paying much lower wages at this time, & still do to some extent. Even when they had to import thousands of "guest workers" to overcome labor shortages, the workers did not go mad with their demands.

I may be kidding myself in thinking there is much more of a partnership mentality between workers & management, which benefits both sides.

This may not last, now that many German companies, automotive & chemical in particular, are building new factories in the US to take advantage of the lower energy costs, the local US market, & the LOWER WAGES.

This could sour German workers, but perhaps the east German experience, & the Russian bogeyman on their doorstep will prevent that, to their advantage.