Saintfletcher you are not wrong I once drove HC trucks interstate and drove RTA trucks of this weight in part of my 22 years in that job.
YOU MUST NOT expect the RTA to act as it should ever!
Remember such miss use of the IR reform laws is openly taking place on RTA work sites.
Once you did not need to fill in a log book if you traveled less than a certain distance maybe this is the way it is done?
Tojo, if you work long hours on a farm you own how can you compare that to a workers only income?
At the end of a casual laborers work life he/she has no asset to sell.
Those casual workers I spoke of with the young gun bosses union wanting to insult them in my last post?
Here is the story as it may well unfold, they service a very big industry have for years.
In fact once in this casual job they can be picked up by the major employer and given full time work, about 10% have been in the past.
They are the cream on the table and bread in the kitchen for the labour hire group who employ them.
That firm won the contract from another who failed to keep the major firm happy.
These workers kept their job just changing labour hire bosses, the new employer needed them, the skills they have an not be picked up over night
Past wage rises have been linked to productivity increases and have averaged 4% a year.
True increases have been put in place and key performance indicators reached.
It has been a union negotiated agreement.
Union left the table after informing the bosses union he was insulting the members.
He then informed the union it would be a non union agreement.
Union members say they are taking steps.
Given the 350 word limit I will post those steps in another post.

So background again highly paid, in this case casual labour, skilled in a task few are skilled in.
That task is dirty and dangerous but if selected to become a full time worker highly rewarding.
Such a job rojo is so highly paid even this union official would be over welmed by the bank balance.
Take it from me I am paid much less than you think and less than those we talk about here.
The switch from highly paid to 5 years without pay rises highlights the failure of workchoices.
EBA had to give productivity increases and make key performance bench marks.
This proposal is to cut wages and increase profits by removing the existing good will between employer and employee.
Such agreements always lower standards in every KPR and in workers too.
The workers? some are already looking for a new job, some are telling the prime employer they will leave if this gos ahead.
Most will not stay if this agreement is imposed.
Other labour hire firms are circling the dieing one I highlight here.
I see a fall in its bottom line income.
And how can they ever expect to undo the damage to employee relations?
Skills needed have power even if unions can do nothing this site will see much change and just maybe an understanding of a basic is needed
if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
What is so wrong with the old system that bought productivity increases and set benchmarks in safety and so much more?
Now consider this, if a trade union was to act so badly it would be national headlines in an instant, why do bosses unions get a free run?
The young gun? he is set to fail , so many have, he may knock on your door one day selling books you do not want he has form in such Fields.

Expecting truck drivers to ignore safety standards is dangerous to everyone.

I've worked in various professions from agency waitering for the 5 star hotels as a second job, to agency teaching in London schools in the UK.

In the Australian hospitality industry, they've been using agency staff on subcontracts to avoid standards.

In most cases, we were expected to break rules and regulations or we risked losing our jobs:

1. I was forced to Wait on people with a contagious airborne infection and I had a fever and bad flu. The agency knew this but threatened to sack me if I didn't take the risk. They claimed that if I called an ambulance for the fever, that I should not expect to return. If I could walk, I could work. Too bad about the health safety of the guests in the function.

2. Ordered to run on wet floors in kitchen: no warning signs, broken glass carrying 3-4 hot heavy plates.

3. Threatened with knives by psychopathic chefs who constantly whined that waiters were not running on the wet and glassy floors fast enough without smiling.

4. Double shifts imposed without notice. Again, running on wet floors over and over.

In the United Kingdom, under Thatcher they decentralised and deregulated central recruitment and brought in private recruitment agencies.

Standards of education went lower and the school environments became dysfunctional, salaries became irregular. Teachers left the profession by the droves. High staff turnovers made it impossible to plan.

Ever since, the UK has claimed that it has had a chronic teacher shortage. This is not actually true. The UK has more teachers than Australia. The UK teachers moved on to bigger and better things.

When the UK contract teachers from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, it costs their schools twice as much as it did to keep their original British staff on. If only they treated them with care, they would have saved a fortune!

The Thatcher system is what Australia wants.

If given juristiction, centralised industrial relations solve many problems of unfairness, exploitation, safety standards, and doing business efficiently.

You need an understanding of the NSW RTA Saintfletcher unless you have been caught in that spider web its not easy.
More effort is given to white washing than getting the job done.
A centralized system? well Rudd seems to me to have put a better way forward than workchoices.
It is not every thing unions or bosses want but never could be.
It in my view is time for both sides to understand we are dealing in human lives not just dollars.
My pointed sarcasm in an above thread highlighting a labour hire group playing hard ball is on the way out is based on past events and an understanding of IR.
An outcome of cutting wages is often that the very best staff leave, to be replaced by lessor people, standards drop and prime contractors have zero loyalty to poor performers, that is labour providers too.
The young gun playing hard ball in fact has both his hands firmly around the throat of his labour hire client.
After the loss of 2 or 3 such fights[remember the trade union is not in the ring]he may well be selling books at our door.

I couldn't agree more belly. It is not just money, it is safey, it is nation building an infrastructure that works and security for everyone.

There is too much white washing from such burocracies like the RTA and not enough pro active standards. I remember when Australia used to take pride in work and safety standards. Now we have to white wash, as you put is, as the standards have slipped.

If there is an accident, there is only so much white washing that they can cover. The rest could uncover what they didn't want us to see. That is hypothetical but not impossible.