Hi Issy,

There hasn't been a Labor government in Canberra since Gough got the chop in 75. We've only had impersonators.

Hi Steele,

In more than 20 years of working in manufacturing I found many of the reffos some of the best skilled workers one could meet. Germans, Greeks, Italians and Eastern Europeans, good blokes who knew their trade, even if they didn't know English all that well.

Nothing wrong with the majority of post war migrants to Australia, hard working battlers, looking for a better life for their families and themselves, that was the vast majority, as it is for the majority of refugees today.

Dear Indy, you are so wide of the mark, its obvious you have no experience of work since you arrived in Aussie in 68. Standing in line at 'Centerstink' to have a bitch about your aged welfare payment cannot be classified as work! Nor can sitting in Gods Waiting Room, with schooner in hand, bashing the butts on the latest linked jackpot machine be considered work as well! What do you classify gainful employment to be? Centrestink, or Gods Waiting Room.

Not all strikes are caused by the workers.
It was not uncommon at the dockyard to be told, confidentially, by someone on the staff that we’d be “on the grass” today or tomorrow.
The Company got two days extra on a contract for every day lost by industrial stoppages, so, when there was a definite hold up looming on parts supply or a favoured contractor was behind with needed work, then one of the foremen would get his orders and would start to upset a worker who was likely to fly off the handle.
The worker, always in a submarine would be moved from a job that he’d just settled down on (and getting settled often meant crawling into a very cramped space abd having the necessary tools handed to you etc.)
Just settled in and along would come the foreman and shift him to a new job. Ditto, repeato.
Worker tells the foreman what to do to himself.
Foreman has the worker sacked for profane and unseemly language.
Worker goes to his Union rep, meeting called.
On strike till the man is reinstated; next day or the one following, all parties appear before the Commissioner who rules (as always) “…normal dockside language” orders reinstatement and back to work tomorrow.
Workers lose three or four days pay, company catches up and gets a bonus six or eight days on the contract.
All mates again and a bit of overtime, everyones happy—-till the next time.

Why use local workers when we can import them already trained from overseas and at cheaper rates while also starving TAFE of funding?
Why hire (and train) full-time workers when you can have a casualised workforce?
Why manufacture locally when you can do it off-shore and increase profit?

That's not the fault of unions but of greedy employers backed up by government. Even large corporations prefer to keep their money off-shore to minimise tax which then shifts the tax burden to others and studies have shown that the cut in penalty rates for hospitality workers failed to produce more jobs "as intended".(surprise, surprise).

Paul1405 - the greatest period of economic growth in our history was the post-WW2 period which relied on the influx of immigrant workers. It was a period when workers were well-paid and the economy boomed due to their increased spending.

Issy, I always knew you were a "comrade in arms" - Garden Island a stronghold of unionism in Sydney, back in the day.

I never liked Bob Hawke, he was a sellout and a show pony, did the workers no favours. Keating, was little better, been a professional politician all his life, knows nothing else.

rache; "the greatest period of economic growth in our history was the post-WW2 period", agree, but it was also a period of lost opportunity, when the conservative Menzies government allowed multi-nationals to dictate their own terms for investment in Australia.

"the greatest period of economic growth in our history was the post-WW2 period"
Paul1405,
Yes, due yo mainly European migrant work ethics !