A touch of irony on this topic. I was in my local 'Woolies' one avo a few weeks back. At the front of the store were 3 uniformed coppers, maybe the SWAT team. The cops had two teenage school girls, about 14 or 15 years old, bailed up for all to see, giving them the third degree. The girls were getting the usual stares from shoppers. One copper was holding a bag of what looked like 'Mars Bars' or some such thing, must have been the evidence! Obviously the pair had been caught knocking off a $2 pack of chocs. One of the girls was having a sob, the coppers were satisfying 'Woolies' that a pair of harden crims were being delt with at great taxpayer expense.

Okay, the girls should not have been shop lifting, but were they delt with in an appropriate manner? I think not.

Paul cops may have been using the frighten them so they never do it again thing
But increasingly some are letting their ego run away with them
No doubt exists some/a few do more damage than Roger Rogerson to the police name

Hi Belly,

Watching an interview with a union representative on this subject. One problem is that the power of unions to check the "wages book" of employers. Once upon a time the union had the power to check any employer after giving reasonable notice, that applied across the board both to union and non union businesses. The employers had that provision removed, I wonder why, so today unions can only check the wages of a union member only who so requests. That of course makes for wholesale (and retail) rorting of the system, and of course later retribution by the employer on the employee.

Back in the day when I was involved in workers affairs (union), you'll like this one. The large company I worked for wanted to take on a new engineering supplier, worth a lot to the new bloke. The deal was such people had to be compliant with the award as a minimum etc. Soon got wind that this mob were non compliant, and had some written arrangement with their workers, (we had a copy of this so called agreement). This mob had removed holiday loading, picnic day, meal allowance etc etc in return for a flat $20/week, plus their so called bonus system, which was structured in such a way, employees got nothing, or an maybe extra $20/month at best, if the boss made an extra million or so.

On of the more draconian provisions was whats called "you fook it, you fix it!" In other words if for some reason a job is stuffed up, then the employee has to fix it at his cost in his time, amazing, in theory it could cost the worker a million dollars.

In discussion with these renegades, firstly they did not want to recognise the rights of the union, (they only had a couple of members employed). The boss there even made the claim he was the best person to look after his workers! Told his "agreement" was totally illegal he claimed some how, the award (law) did not apply to him, and he believed it.

The media never kicks up a fuss when employees are overpaid; they don't even report it.

The usual suspects here - the private enterprise-hating Marxists - are not just hateful, but plain stupid if they think Woolworths deliberately underpaid workers.

Mistakes by lowly pay clerks etc are common.

Leave your suspicious, anti-capitalist hatred for the likes of slippery franchises like 7 Eleven that deliberately faked timesheets and used other such methods to underpay workers. That was deliberate fraud, deserving of criminal sanctions.

Woolworths employees will be compensated, and more; and the dimwits responsible will he dealt with. And, it is unlikely to ever happen again.

Wow. My husband and some family members 0wn their
own businesses and are in private business.
Imagine what they would think if they only
knew that I'm a "private business hating Marxist."
Gee whiz. BTW - what's a Marxist?

cont'd ...

And the staff and media have it all wrong about
Woolworths?

Good to know. Could we have some evidence of that
please?