While I accept $10 per hour is a very low pay rate, if anyone thinks we can afford to pay near or above $20 per hour to collect trolleys, and compete globally, they have some serious issues.

This is living proof the minimum wage is simply too high.

The FWA calculates the minimun wage. Rents,groceries,fuel, utilities, They all take a share of the minimun wage. Competing does not have a calculation.

Doog, competition on the global market may not have a calculation, but it can sure determine our future. We cant all be employed by the service industries.

Spare a thought for the future of the low payd. Thailand at 3 $ / day you are never going to compete so forget it, and look after our own.

There are three ways we can compete:

The first (perhaps surprisingly) is the do nothing option. Business as usual, and eventually the markets will adjust the value of our dollar to a level that we can compete at.

The second option is a race to the bottom: cut wages and working conditions to enable us to compete with low wage countries. Cut taxes to make us a more attractive investment destination, even when that means we can't afford better services.

The third option is a race to the top: concentrate on high value work, and invest heavily in science, education and infrastructure to enable our population to do that.

Those on the Left usually favour the third option and try to avoid the second.
ISTM those on the Right tend to favour the second option because they ignore the existence of the other alternatives!

It is not only trolley collectors rehctub, it's everywhere.

Once upon a time, nice mothers used to work in child care places for a bit of money to help the family budget. Today the women's libbers have managed to put in place regulations requiring a degree or 2 to work in one, pay rates have become ridiculous for the job, & the long suffering taxpayer has to pick up most of the bill, because working mothers can't afford the price.

Once upon a time, 2 men, with a small truck load of bitumen used to drive down the road, patching pot holes in a couple of minutes, covering miles of road in a day. Today it takes those same 2 men, plus another 2 with a truck of road signs, witches hats, & other paraphernalia, plus 2 lollipop people to do the job. Four vehicles & 5 men to drop a bit of tar in a hole for gods sake. Instead of miles, the whole circus covers just 2 or 3 potholes a day.

Once upon a time us oldies got a great education in classes of 40 or more, with competent teachers. Today teaching standards are so low even with 20 kids in a class, education is poor. It costs twice as much for half the result.

Everywhere you look we are pricing ourselves into a Greek future

socialist dogma leads to future generations paying for their indulgences.

runner, unless that's a mindless insult, can you be a bit more specific? What socialist dogma are you referring to? How much are future generations paying? And did/will those future generations get the benefit of what they are paying for?

And why do you single out socialists? Aren't you aware that capitalists also make dogmatic decisions resulting in false economies that future generations pay for?

This is what globalisation was really all about.
Reducing the wests wages and conditions to compete with the slaves in the third world.
If you like $10 an hour wages so much flesher why dont you po to china. Im sure they will welcome another exploiter of workers.

Have you only just caught on to that mikk?

Any smart person has known for years that it is a lefty elite plot to get the western peasant class, [worker in your language] off the comfortable life we have built for ourselves. Those elites like union bosses, bureaucrats & academics believe all the spoils belong to them, not the workers.

That is one of the reasons the less wealthy areas of England voted overwhelmingly to kick the elitist EU in the nose & leave the mess.

Your leaders don't believe people like you should be able to own houses, or drive cars, unless it is as chauffeurs for them. Great you support them.

Mikk, I have said this often, and of cause nobody can give an answer, if we pay our trolley collectors $20 per hour, how much should we be paying our police?

Where does it end?

Furthermore, if we are going to pay $20 per hour, then get rid of all the 457 trolley pushers and get our dole recipients on the job, as they can collect trolleys, and get paid the $20 per hour for 25 or so hours per week.

To set the minimum wage at such a high rate is crippling us and we are so stupid to fall for it.

There are two ways to make a good paycheque, work smart (high skills) or work long hours, but to expect someone to have a decent lifestyle, in low skilled jobs, working just 38 hours is ridiculous.

Besides, governments are responsible for welfare, not bussinesses.

Hasbeen, no smart person knows that or will ever know that, for the simple reason that it's not true, and indeed utterly ridiculous.

For a start, it's not the "lefty elite" who want to "western peasant class off the comfortable life we have built for ourselves". Everyone on the Left wants to improve the quality of life of working people, though there's disagreement on how it should be done (some think higher pay is the key; others including myself would prefer the government to provide better services). But the Right believe the spoils belong to the financiers, not the workers. And considering the decline of the wage share of the economy, and the shift in the burden of taxation onto consumers, it looks like the Right are firmly in control.

"That is one of the reasons the less wealthy areas of England voted overwhelmingly to kick the elitist EU in the nose & leave the mess."
That's certainly what many believe, but in reality most of the problems blamed on the EU in Britain are actually the result of British government decisions. And the correlation with wealth is weak; the correlation with education levels is much stronger. See http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/23/eu-referendum-live-results-and-analysis

"Your leaders don't believe people like you should be able to own houses, or drive cars, unless it is as chauffeurs for them. Great you support them."
Which leaders are you referring to? I know Joe Hockey thought poor people didn't drive cars, but hasn't he quit?

Aidan

many public servants are being paid large salaries to push the gw propaganda, the feminist dogma, social engineering. Who do you think is paying for this garbage. Certainly not you. Our debt continues to grow.

WTF Hasbeen.
A leftie plot??
So all those anarchists that protested in Seattle, Genoa and Melbourne were rightards like you I suppose.
The WTO and the IMF are lefties? Get your hand off it.

Butch
The minimum wage is $17.29 per hour not $20. Which is atm is about $12.62 $US. Hardly exorbitant.
Hardly likely to bankrupt the likes of colesworths is it?
Im surprised you would support them rechtub given their predatory war on independents like yourself.

According to http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/the_lifestyle/general_duties/working_conditions
Police constables get a starting salary of $65000. With 6 weeks holidays and a 38 hour week that works out at $37 per hour. Before allowances for weekends, nights, extra duties etc.
Sounds fair to me.

As does $20 per hour for a trolley collector. They have a hard physical job and also dangerous. I wonder how many trolley collectors have been run over in some dimly lit supermarket carpark. I wonder how many of them got workers comp.

"There are two ways to make a good paycheque, work smart (high skills) or work long hours, but to expect someone to have a decent lifestyle, in low skilled jobs, working just 38 hours is ridiculous."

1.How can people work smart when the lying liars party is doing everything they can to make education less accessible and more expensive.
2.How many hours a week do you want the plebs to work flesher? 40, 50, 60, 100?
How telling it is that you think hard working men and women shouldnt have a "decent lifestyle".
Its one thing slagging off pensioners and the unemployed as undeserving now its anyone who works full time in a low skilled job that needs to have money ripped from their hands by scum like woolworths and coles..

Rehctub,

Don't you ever stop whinging?

On a visit to the UK I saw that Brussels ordered the UK not
to build a road where it had been planned.
My comment to my son's father-in-law was that Britain is a colony
of Brussels. They have the same relationship as London's Colonial
Office had to the British colonies around the world where they had
their local assemblies.
He did not accept that comparison, well not immediately anyway.

One of my dreams a while back was that Australia should saw off the
rest of the world and only import absolutely essential items that we
could not manufacture, eg large jet aircraft.
It would give a whole different set of problems of course but it would
solve our competition problem with the cheap labour countries.

Bazz,

I'm intrigued. Which road was that?

________________________________________________________________________________

runner,

Firstly, none of those things is actually socialist!

Secondly, what "social engineering" are you referring to?
What "feminist dogma"? And if it's that men and women are equal, isn't that worth promoting when there are still people around who think they aren't?
What "gw propaganda"? Do you mean the science?

And at this stage of the economic cycle, of course our debt continues to grow! Trying to cut our debt now weakens the private sector, increases unemployment and doesn't ultimately result in less debt – indeed it ultimately results in more debt, as it makes it take longer for the private sector to return to full strength so we will need to run deficits for longer.

But whether we take the sensible course of deliberately running bigger deficits to spur a private sector recovery, or we opt for the stupid alternative of embarking on the futile task of trying to cut our way back to surplus, future generations have zero obligation to pay the debt off. Whether we have the highest debt in the world or none at all, whether we run deficits or surpluses should depend on the economic circumstances at the time, not the bogus need to reach a certain debt level. We're totally immune from Greece's problems because we're financially sovereign; we have unlimited credit. And because we have a floating currency and no foreign currency debt, we're also immune from the problems of Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

The problem starts at the top, we have a prime minister who earns more than the American president, over charging lawyers, solicitors, dentists and doctors to name a few the whole top end are paid or charging too much.

We have revenue raising Governments and local councils issuing penalty notices and fines way out of proportion to other countries.

The poor sods at the bottom of the salary chain need these wages to pay for the charges etc from the higher ups.

$20 to take up the hem of a pair of pants took the person about 6 minutes crazy.

Shop rentals and home rentals way too high all tradesmen services overpriced by comparison to the time it takes them.

You can fly to Thailand or the Philippines and have a holiday and have dental work done way cheaper than just having the work done in Australia.

It will not change once someone gets a set wage they do not want to go backwards, the only way to fix it is a broad based reduction that will not happen.

We have not started on the Business problem, in the past someone owned a company they made a reasonable profit to make up for there time etc now too many companies are owned by stockholders therefore they need to make criminal amounts of profit to satisfy the thousands of part owners.

Dear rehctub,

You wrote;

“While I accept $10 per hour is a very low pay rate, if anyone thinks we can afford to pay near or above $20 per hour to collect trolleys, and compete globally, they have some serious issues. This is living proof the minimum wage is simply too high.”

Okay, I know this is a favorite soap box of yours, but please explain how in the hell does the rate the big supermarkets pay their trolley collectors impede us competing globally?

Bit of a disconnect there I'm afraid.

Look if you are so cut up about it why don't you shop at Aldi. They are able to offer lower prices partly because their operators do not bag the groceries and they have coin locked trollies. You get your $2 back when you return it. If you want to shop at the two majors then you shouldn't be whinging about the prices.

Aiden,
I do not remember just where the road was planned.
It was a major road, not a motorway, to provide a bypass around a town.
It was a newspaper article. It was probably around 2004.
If you want to search for it say so and I will look up my old passport
and get the years.

TWIMC, the trolley men are not employed by Coles/Woolies but by contractors.

I found an old news article that stated that employees of 457 visas actually cost more than local staff.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/06/27/glance-457-visa-holders-australia

Why would companies hire people on 457 visas if they cost more?
Why do they hire adults as trolley collectors instead of under-21's which cost less?
How can they win all their trolley contracts if they are paying their staff more than Australian workers?
If these people are on 457 visas, how can they as trolley collectors be classed as skilled?
Something doesn't smell right...

And if this is happening how stupid are we as a nation?
We pay a adult foreigner triple the normal wage in his own country and he takes most of that money home, never to be spent within our economy again.
We give a foreigner that kind of get ahead opportunity over giving an Aussie possibly their first job which not only costs less but has the added potential to save a welfare expense, plus the money gets spent here?
And although the job is so easy people doing work for the dole could do it, Coles or Woolies don't deserve any more free laundering of taxpayers funds directly into shareholder profit via welfare recipients grocery expenses and should provide Australians jobs.

Its un-Australian not to hire Australians and Coles and Woolies honestly should be shamed SEVERELY for this because they PROFIT FROM WELFARE.

It may not be the greatest start to working life, but its not the worst (it's better than nothing) and for some young Aussies its one opportunity less just to get a job.

AC,

Workers on 457 Visas cost a lot more. On top of the same salary as other workers, the costs incl relocation, health cover, schooling etc, but is generally a last resort when the requisite skills are hard to find in Aus.

Bazz,
Is it on this list?
http://legacy.abd.org.uk/bypass.htm

Europe raised environmental standsrds (particularly regarding endangered species habitats) which pushed construction costs up, but that's something that should (and probably would) have happened anyway. But AFAIK the EU has never actually blocked any British road project, and doesn't have the power to do so.

_________________________________________________________________________

rehctub,
Where did you get the crazy idea that people come here on 457 visas to be trolley pushers?

Aiden, as I said I do not remember the name of the town.
It was years ago.

Aiden, where do you think the idea came from. I will give you a hint, colour of their skin and language barriers. And i'm not being racist, just stating facts.

Poirot, this is a public forum and unlike many here I am self employed, and have been for more than twenty years and have seen many changes in the workplace. so if you don't wish to contribute, you can leave at an time.

Steel, sorry I dint spell it out for you, I seriously underestimated your ability to join the dots so as to say, so I will explain it for you.

If you pay your low skilled workers $18 - @22.50 per hour, this is the figure quoted by the FWC, perhaps it was taking weekends into account, then it stands to reason that a highly qualified person, especially one with highly demanded skills become unaffordable, especially when doing business OS.

We have a situation now where medium sized factories that had dozens of welders and fabricators, now have two. They design and build a prototype, then send it off OS to be mass produced. 4x4 accessories are one example, boat builders are another. We simply cant afford to build anything anymore and paying low skilled jobs at near 40 grand a year is ludicrous to say the least.

Rehctub,
I'm not sure what the deal is with trolley collectors but I'll agree with you that they all seem to be foreigners.
Everywhere I go they are of Middle Eastern looking.
I haven't seen a typical Australian looking kid doing a trolley job in 5 - 10yrs I'd guess, and I don't live in a suburb that has a large amount of foreigner ethnicity living in it.
There's either racism or something going on, but somethings not right.
I still stand by what I said about Coles and Woolies.

Dear rehctub,

Give it a break old son. To be saying paying our trolley collectors the minimum wage reduces our international competitiveness because it drives up the wages of welders is just too much.

Let me be clear I want people in my country to be treated decently and not to be paid below the living wage just because it offends your sensibilities.

Many of those who the FWC identified as being exploited were international students. I have talked to quite a few of them. They are paying $23,000 a year to attend a simple TAFE in my area. The money they earn driving taxis, working at & Elevens or hauling trolleys stays in Australia as rent and food expenses. Their direct education expenses are from money borrowed by their families in India or China or the ME that will need to be paid back. It is these funds that have driven education to the third highest export earning sector in our economy and help sustain our quality of life.

What you should be doing is not only making sure they are not exploited but also expressing our gratitude for the funds they provide which go into paying the wages of many Australians. What we shouldn't be doing is wanting them to work for less than what we pay ordinary Australians nor banging on about their race.

We should be better than that.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You wrote;

“Workers on 457 Visas cost a lot more. On top of the same salary as other workers, the costs incl relocation, health cover, schooling etc, but is generally a last resort when the requisite skills are hard to find in Aus.”

Not even close.

My brother recently was made redundant from a top 100 Australian company where he worked in the IT department manipulating databases. His and other divisions within the company have been gradually replaced over the last 2 years by Indian workers under the 457 scheme. Of the over 100 in his area he was one of the last to go. He walked into a new job pretty well straight away so he is pretty philosophical about the whole thing but it certainly pisses me off to no end.

The trick getting workers in for base level programming jobs but making sure they are far more skilled than what the job requires. Then without promoting them have them assume higher level roles and responsibilities. My brother sees it going on throughout the bigger companies all the time now. Entire IT floors are now being populated by 457 visa holders.

To claim the 'skills are hard to find in Aus' certainly hasn't been true in the past in his sector as all those jobs were once held by Australian citizens. However the hollowing out of jobs for Australians by these big IT employers will probably mean that this will be true in the future. As my brother said if he was just starting out then mainframe IT work would not be the sector he would look to to provide future employment. Mentoring and training that was once a hallmark of these jobs has all but disappeared in a decade.

You can try and explain this away but your side of politics is doing this country irreparable harm by having over a million 457 jobs going to non-Australians though it does pander to to those who pour money into Liberal Party coffers.

Steel, the whole reason why this goes on is because we have priced ourselves out of the global market.

I have no problem with a low skilled worker wanting a decent wage, but not for a 9 to 5 38 hour week. You either work longer to make your wage, or smarter.

If we pay almost $40K per year for these low skilled jobs, how do we encourage our future tradies, or engineers, or more so, how do we encourage our future police to work for less than twice this amount while risking death on the job, and that's only once they have qualified.

Doctors spend several years at uni, scrapping by on part time jobs because their studies are so demanding. How do we keep them living on scraps while trolley pushers get the best part of $40K per year even if they don't study.

As I say, if we are going to pay anyone $18 per hour, it should be our own unemployed and let's face it, if the likes of Wollies or Coles sees someone pushing trollies having a go, chances are it will lead to a job.

But by all means keep pushing for high wages for the low skilled, but don't say you have not been warned.

Aiden, Butch,
I think you'll find that employment services and the Neighbourhood House movement are partnered with companies like Bunnings, Coles, Harvey Norman and Woolworths in their adult education programmes for refugees and migrants.
I doubt any of the above corporations would go through the hassle of sponsoring a 457 application when they are getting workers through their so-called philanthropic ventures.
The way it works is that the company sponsors the community education service or signs and MOU undertaking to employ a certain number of refugees once they have been sufficiently trained.
It's a crook system since the people providing the training are altruistic volunteers and the jobs guaranteed, the free market doesn't enter into it and I doubt that many of the trainers realise it's rigged.
If this horrible internship program gets up then the outlook will be even worse for unskilled Australian workers.
Aiden talking about a high skilled workforce is all well and good but importing the most dull witted people from the Third World on forged credentials while pursuing such lofty goals will only further exacerbate the globalist's society of winners and losers.
Dumb people can't compete with smart people and it's widely acknowledged that around 40% of low skilled work will be automated, including agriculture, in the next decade.
You can see examples of this already in India, the expected industrial boom of the last decade has largely failed to alleviate unemployment in the developed zones due to the fact that most of the factories built were highly automated, the Suzuki plants in Guragon are one example.

Jay, whether or not the likes of Wollies employs these people, or they come from labor hire companies, as they do now, the fact remains that in order to continue, Wollies and others will see about an 80% increase in their costs of collecting trollies, and who is going to pay for that. More importantly, can the industry afford the increases.

Butchers are on about $23 an hour, that's trade qualified and to make a decent living they have to work 55 to 70 hours. Its very common.

Electricians are on about $40 per hour, so make the same as a butcher working 70 hours, in about 45 Hours, and rightly so as they are far more skilled.

Engineers make more like $70 per hour, doctors i'm guessing about $130 an hour.

Traffic controllers are paid about $24.

One can become a traffic controller in a few hours, mainly over the internet, whereas a butcher takes 2-3 years depending on the circumstances. You can understand why its a dying trade.

I feel minimum wages should be around $25K a year and those with families will be supported through welfare. By setting the minimum wage as high as it is, the burden of welfare is being placed on the business and that's not productive because if a business pays a dollar for labour, they will pass it on as a dollar fifty, and rightly so.

The way the minimum wage is worked out is just killing us as a nation and the sooner we realize that the sooner we can start to climb out of the rut we are in.

No doubt I will get crucified for this, but so be it, someone has to tell it how it is. If you want a decent pay packet, and you don't have skills, then you have to work longer hours, it truly is that simple.

rehctub,

"The way the minimum wage is worked out is just killing us as a nation..."

No it's not....just because you're a pessimistic whinger, it doesn't mean your construct is valid.

"They called it Super Tuesday in America, but it was the Australian economy that won the day.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that its economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.0% in the fourth quarter of 2015, above the estimates of economists who predicted that the Aussie economy would be more negatively affected by the economic slowdown in China.

It also marked the 98th straight quarter that the Australian economy has avoided a recession. That’s right, Australia has gone almost 25 years without having two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the standard definition of a recession."

"....this brings the Aussie’s close to the developed-world record held by the Netherlands, whose own streak of 103 straight quarters without a recession came to a halt during the global financial crisis."

http://fortune.com/2016/03/02/australia-recession/

Poirot - Do you honestly believe the statistics put out by Governments or organizations that have a vested interest in good figures.

Your reputation just took a nosedive.

Phillip, that's all Poirot believes in, but only when it suits I might add.

I listened to a green defending the welfare wasters the other day, and she said she had not seen any evidence of welfare waste. What a joke!

Anyone who thinks we are going gang busters is simply out of touch, but hey, the easiest person to lie to has always been yourself. So go right ahead Poirot, and while your on the hunt for stats, how about you find out how much of the libs debt is through their own doing.

Philip S, rehctub,

So of I highlight the "fact" that Australia has gone almost 25 years without having two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the standard definition of a recession....you two are denying it?

Is that so?

Well, instead of warbling that you don't believe it or whatever, how about proving that statistic wrong?

You can't, of course, because it isn't wrong.

Here's the butcher saying such things, when he habitually emails top Oz economists to get the "real" statistics...that's what economists deal in, rehctub - statistics.

Here's one for your glorious LNP management.

"$200m tipped into landfill firms by government's Direct Action dubbed a 'waste'

The country's biggest operators of landfills have pocketed almost $200 million from the Abbott-Turnbull government's Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) without having to prove the funds reduced their greenhouse gas production."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/200m-tipped-into-landfill-firms-by-governments-direct-action-dubbed-a-waste-20160628-gpu66j#ixzz4D0a4AFO2

Not forgetting the millions the govt has poured into private training colleges in its haste to destroy TAFE...you know the "colleges"? - the ones that go bust every second week after pocketing the $$$.

Poirot - Just because something is published as fact does not mean it is true, even if at the moment no-one can prove it false.

A fact long ago was the earth was flat, to say otherwise would lead to a charge of heracy and death.

There is a country Australia does a lot of trade with that publishes growth figures, that they have admitted are largely based on guesswork.

Australia's unemployment figures anyone with half a brain knows they are manipulated, but by your argument they are real and must be believed until someone can actually prove they are wrong.

By the way wasn't it Dudd or Dillard who started the emission rebate scam, the next mob just got caught in the ongoing scam

How sad to believe anyone in this day and age would believe all published statistics and figures are absolutely true.

Poirot, I could also say that we went from zero debt to hundreds of billions of debt in just two three year terms of labor and, while I accept they dealt with the GFC, this accounted for only $20 billion of that debt, as the other $20 billion required was in the bank.

One cant help but wonder where we would be now had we not gone down the Kevin 07 path to mayhem and destruction. So do take all the facts into account when passing judgement there Poirot.

Philip S,
Unemployment figures are easy to manipulate. GDP figures can't be manipulated so easily, as the ATO would notice.

'Twas Abbott who started the emissions rebate scam. A carbon tax can't be so easily defrauded.

rechctub,
"The way the minimum wage is worked out is just killing us as a nation"
On the contrary, it's making us stronger as it encourages more automation.

There is nothing worth doing that the minimum wage prevents us from doing.

"Poirot, I could also say that we went from zero debt to hundreds of billions of debt in just two three year terms of labor and, while I accept they dealt with the GFC, this accounted for only $20 billion of that debt, as the other $20 billion required was in the bank."
Why is that a problem? 'Tis precisely 0% of our credit limit.
The interest rate fell and inflation remained under control.

"One cant help but wonder where we would be now had we not gone down the Kevin 07 path to mayhem and destruction."
If you want to find out, look at Britain: a prolonged deep double dip (almost triple dip) recession, and when growth resumed it was mainly in low value low wage jobs.