Belly, how many unions jobs would you suggest are casual, as a percentage of their workforce. Are there any?

As for you comment about trying to change the laws, you can bet your bottom dollar the wheels are already in motion by business on ways to overcome such unworkable laws. When you have union supporters the likes of Doog, who thinks the highest qualified should perform all tasks, this just shows how out of touch some are.

You see in the past 20 years we have seen the domination of extended hours and the seven day working week, all of which make predicting spending habits of the consumers unpredictable. As a small business owner we have no idea when people are going to shop and, because there is no more money to spend, it means the takings are spread out over much more hours, making staffing costs skyrocket, all to the advantage of the big end of town, from Coles and Woolies, to the likes of Bunnings, all of which have put so many small traders/operators out of business. Fancy suggesting 20 years ago that a hardware store, office supply chain, department store, or grocery store would be open till 9pm 6 nights out of 7. Well we have it, and how many families have been ruined in the process. Where were the unions in protecting the family unit from the likes of anti sociable working hours. Asleep at the wheel, or what?

Aidan,
Yes & again in the 90's to 2004 when i was a member but got so fed up with them because when a group of us wanted their help we were told we were too small a group.
Also, all the rep did was Howard bashing right or wrong, it became tiresome & produced no outcome apart from us being left where we were.

If anyone wants to bring governments into this, then they need look no further than a comparison from 2006/07 to 2013. And of cause it's gone from bad to worse from that point on, partly due to accumulated inherited debt, that is simply unserviceable, and party from stupidity of current mob of incompetents.

But the one thing that unions and unionists alike just never seem to understand, is that workers are employed out of necessity, not for the sense of creating jobs, and while some employers may crow about how great they are and how many jobs they have created, the reality is the search for ways to replace workers with machines will never stop, at least not when the unions and lobbyists keep pushing for more and more.

Of cause they bang on about safety. The reality is you can't legislate against stupidity, and while there have been some terrible unavoidable accidents, there have also been plenty of stupid ones, so automation was the outcome.

They, the unions, just have to accept that the cost of living increases in the likes of energy, along with fees and charges are neither the fault of employers, nor the problem of employers. Because if it's not cost of living expenses they want us to address with pay increases, it's wanting us to increase super contributions, or provide more secure jobs.

The reality is, in this life you can have anything you want, but you can't have it for nothing. Increased cost burdens placed on businesses must be paid for, and not from profits, otherwise the worker wins, while the employer looses. The simple rule is, to get, one must give.

In the past three decades we have worn a 9.5% increase just in super alone, without a single mandatory cent being put in by workers. Tell me, at what point should they contribute to their own futures?

Welcome to your world, the world your unions have created for you. A world of uncertainty and insecurity, all fought for by your unions, with your funds, all to your detriment.

Unions aren't zeroing in on economic sustainability yet that's what they should be doing. When has a union ever been seen or heard of saying about highly paid that they're getting too much ?
It's that selfish indifference to this inbalance that causes them to go for raises instead of lesser charges & fees. On one hand unions are highly political yet on the other hand when they should be political they're not.
I don't think the unions have it in them to work on a balanced income scheme simply because their own quest for more reward yet no increased effort is as far as they can see. This is really disappointing because they really could do a lot of good if they disengaged themselves from the ALP first of all.

In for a penny in for a pound this still staunch unionist has failed! see I have failed to ever see one multi national, you know the ones, they never pay ANY TAX one of their workers pays more than them, say we made too much profit, here is some of it back, never saw a wages slave, on the lowest income having too much to spend on his/her kids at Christmas, it has taken me all these years and still I can not get my head around the thought an economy is to make the rich richer

rehctub,
You are simply lying when you claim our debt to be unserviceable. Not only is the cost of servicing our debt rather small, but we are a sovereign currency issuer with unlimited capacity to service our debt.

Unions should not be trying to stop the replacement of workers with machines; if anything they should be trying to accelerate it, as this makes each worker more productive. But the government have been failing in their duty to ensure there are enough new jobs available to replace the old ones. In the Gillard era things were worse, as the RBA board actively sabotaged the economy because they didn't think enough people were unemployed to keep inflation down!

Although you can't legislate against stupidity itself, you can legislate to minimise its consequences.

In the past three decades, labour productivity has increased much more than wages. Despite extra costs such as superannuation, profits rose as a proportion of GDP.