I have heard and read a whole lot about the proposed changes to the Indutrial Relations Legislation in our country. The main question are being debated such as:
Will it the removal of workers entitlements create more jobs? This is the wrong question!
There are many more questions that are better:
What impact will a reduction in the lowest paid workers and entitlements have on the poor? Our Society?
Our collective apathy and greed has caught up with us. The poor in my community are panicking about these changes, what about the people in your communities? Let’s get moving together!
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves, Henry de Jouvenel
Technorati Tags: poverty, industrial relations
3 responses so far ↓
1 Granny // Oct 26, 2005 at 6:55 pm
The “poor” sometimes neglect that the “rich” are the ones who pay for their freebies.
Having run our own business, it was hard going to look after our employees when they demanded more of us than we could afford - demanded perhaps not by them, but by their unions.
I also think that the employee needs to be responsible - for example - when we ran a nursing home - we got the best equipment for the staff to use. Very often the staff couldn’t be bothered using the lifting equipment, and lifted the heavy old patients by themselves. They hurt their backs - then who was blamed - we were as the employer. Huge amounts were paid for workers compensation, when the employee should have been doign the right thing by the people they were working for.
2 Jon Owen // Oct 26, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Thanks Granny for this perspective. You do write with a lot of passion, yet by using emotive terms such as “we pay for their freebies” we can sometimes miss out on the fact that these changes will impact workplace safety: there will be less and less of it as the dispensible labour workforce is shoved from pillar to post, literally from week to week in new jobs, with new machines and the like.
They will have less and less power, security and rights. How will this foster a better workplace? Less money, less commitment I reckon!
Isn’t it funny how little Johnny always goes on and on about increasing this nation’s security on one hand while whittling away all rights and securities on the other, it does not equate!
3 Granny // Oct 26, 2005 at 10:09 pm
Hi Jon - I mean “we” as all people in OZ who pay taxes - workplace safety is needed to be done not just by employers but by EMPLOYEES - as I mentioned. I have no idea what little Johnny says - but what we experienced as being employers and self-employed over a period of over 40 years.
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