Precarious job security is not confined to the third world

Phil says:

08:17am | 15/11/10

How do you propose to amend this. Yes the current regime is attempting to get a better education for some, that does little to help those already in the work force. The new labor laws are much harder to get rid of permanent employees wo underperform, or no longer needed, or simply cannot do the job, thus many employers go with casual or labour hire companies out of flexability. Yes it costs more, but in the end its cheaper and you can cut your losses when needed.

My experience is that the want to work, a little ability and half a brain will get you everywhere. A very successful friend who has not long ago passed away never spent a day in school in his life. He could not read or write english. Yet he died a multi millionaire because of hard work and dedication. He never worked a 38/35 hour week, more like 70-80 but he got ahead, provided well for his family, and loved them no less.

Of course the union movement, and its supporters could start many a business employing those they purport to stand for, pay them high wages and give them security. Unfortunately once the business starts to bleed, they will then learn about the realities of business life. You need to earn more than you spend in the long run. One or two years you can do the opposite, but if you continue this you will go broke.

Many bosses put their hard earned or borrowed money into a company, build up capital. They deserve a return on investment, otherwise why not put the cash in the bank and not employ people.

Cornucopia says:

09:00am | 15/11/10

Phil it all depends on what you want to favour.

If you’re only interested in a society that likes profits and economic growth then treat people like cattle or wage-slaves.

If you prefer a society that treats people like humans and has a bit of a heart then entrench minimum standards in the law.

You’ll find that most major companies don’t have much of a problem with labour laws and are happy to be even more generous. Have a look at staff incentives at places like St George Bank that provides many different types of leave and benefits to staff.

It’s only the little guys that really aren’t that efficient and who really don’t have the skills to compete in a global market that struggle with this.

Richard says:

12:45pm | 15/11/10

Cornucopia, your example of a model company is St. George? That wouldn’t be a subsidiary of Westpac, one of the big 4 greedy scumbag banks would it? No wonder they can afford to pay generous benefits to their staff~ its not hard when you have an oligarchic monopoly and are able to gouge your customers (read: every Australian with a mortgage, business loan, personal loan or credit card) relentlessly.

Nice to see you slagging off small business though. I mean, afterall~ they only employ 49% of all employees so who cares right? Well actually I do. I guess that’s the difference between libertarians like myself and fascists like Ged and yourself: you guys champion the rights and interests of Big Unions, Big Government and Big Business. Libertarians stand up for individual rights, and try to support small businesses, prefer small government, and believe there should only be small unions.

Cornucopia says:

01:28pm | 15/11/10

ahh Richard you make me laugh.

At one point you champion the rights of the individual and then say that a bank is “gouging” those poor people when in fact they are exercising their rights to operate their business profitably.

Small business can’t do it because they’re simply not efficient and profitable. The 49% employments figures only comes about when you include the business owners. That would be like including shareholders in the employment of listed companies. It’s double counting.

If you don’t like what the banks have to offer here’s a thought: cut up your credit card as you don’t need it, get a much smaller mortgage on a much smaller house, don’t bother with personal loan because you can save for things and if you need a business loan then clearly your business can’t support itself so don’t bother. Leave the market.

I have no sympathy for people that get in over their heads and then whine about it.

Craig says:

02:37pm | 15/11/10

Really all depends if you think it’s reasonable that someone needs to work 70+ hours a week to “get ahead”.  That’s ten hours a day, minimum, starting with weekends. 

Some driven people may *want* to do this, but expecting anybody to work like that for any period of time is not realistic.  Not to mention what working that hard will do to you; Kevin Rudd prior to his dumping being a prime example.

Brian says:

04:08pm | 15/11/10

Actually, the 49% only comes about when you include the business owners who work for the business, so it’s more like including the board of directors in the count… which we do. Not double counting at all.

Phil says:

10:10pm | 15/11/10

Cornucopia - Where did I say that we should get rid of minimum standards or laws?

Funny that many large companies I perform work for so use outside labour to mitigate issues. Maybe not the greedy banks who need security of data (they just get that all done in India)

You along with Ged have not proposed one idea to amend this so called injustice in employment in Australia. I employ well over 100 people, every one of them casual. If they work hard and put in a good effort they are paid accordingly. If they dont they dont have a job. Simple formula really. My company is not called the benevolent society, nor do I receive tax deductible donations to run it. I put up my own cash, take the risks, and hopefully at the end of the year if no one has gone broke on me, I make a small profit of less than 2% on turnover. I am not greedy, but will not tollerate slackness in the workplace.

In previous businesses, I very rarely knocked back a genuine reason for a day off, 3 times in 5 years, but anyone taking a false sickie if a day off was refused was frowned upon, and usually did not last long in the job.

I work on far less margins that your beloved St George, who I hear are coincidently getting ready after the staff redundancy freeze following the Westpac takeover to run the broom through the place, close some branches etc.

See I bet you nor Ged would be prepared to risk your own life savings to start a business, and if you did I bet again, that you would not look at yourself as the modern day robin hood, looking after all those that cant help themselves out of your pockets.

Dont worry Richard, Conucopia and Ged love paying excessive electricity bills, shop in only the most inflated price stores, and look for the dearest home loans and credit cards.

Thats right they dont want us to get ahead.

Gary I dont advocate everyone work more than 10 hours a day, although many of my employees do and get paid proper overtime to do so, but if you look at those who have succeeded in life, and I appreciate success is a personal thing, many put in long hours. Personally I work very long hours, but take regular breaks. I want to get ahead pay off my mortgage and do more with my family. I work incredibly long hours for 7-8 months a year and can relax the other 4-5. As my travel is minimal I make up 10-15 hours on the average Joe by not sitting in traffic.

marley says:

02:03pm | 15/11/10

Absolutely. But of course, if you employ anyone in your business, you’re just another grub.

Drizzle says:

10:52am | 15/11/10

Read your own rant, JulesG and you will see why no one wants to employ you.

St. Michael says:

01:56pm | 15/11/10

Perhaps the takeup rate had something to do with the fact casuals get paid a flat 15-20% on top of the award rate across the board for all their days of employment.  When you’ve adjusted your financial affairs to take account of that amount, it makes it a lot harder to go back to a standard award with overtime and holiday rates.  That doesn’t mean casuals wouldn’t prefer fulltime employment or more hours of work, it just means casuals are living hand to mouth and therefore can’t afford to go to decent conditions.  I call that an indictment on the casualisation of the workforce, not a plaudit.

Never let the full truth get in the way of a convenient rearranging of facts.

St. Michael says:

12:34pm | 15/11/10

If you’re employing true casuals with the usual 15-20% premium on their wages, then you must really like the privilege of being able to sack your staff on one hour’s notice.  Oh, I forgot! Casuals also don’t get public holidays and don’t get paid any extra for overtime, no matter how much they work.  And if they don’t like it, you can dismiss on one hour’s notice.  How’s that workin’ out for you?

But you aren’t avoiding unfair dismissal laws, in fact: the Fair Work Act provides that unfair dismissal laws apply to casuals when they’re engaged in regular and systematic work, which by the sound of it is what you’ve got in your business since the only reason you’re keeping people out of fulltime work isn’t the lack of work but rather your belief that only permanents have access to unfair dismissal laws.  Guess you’re in for a nasty surprise one of these days.

You also rather conveniently miss the fact that while the Liberals were in, if you had less than 100 staff, then for a good 12 years or more not one of your staff had access to unfair dismissal laws or more.

You might also reread the legislation again and see how hard it makes it for all those “freeloadun employiz” to actually claim unfair dismissal.  For a start, if you’ve got less than 14 staff, feel free to dismiss a staff member on the 364th day of their employment.  They can’t come back at your for unfair dismissal.  If you’ve got them on your books as “contractors”,  again, no unfair dismissal.  Small businesses also get cut a break because they only have to comply with the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code to make their unfair dismissals valid.

And did you notice something? Casuals are even less loyal to you than fulltimers are.  You can sack them on a moment’s notice; they can also sack you as their employer on a moment’s notice.  Odds are on you’re also whining about how there’s a skill shortage on and how you can’t get good people in.  Guess most of them went casual and went somewhere they can get better conditions, like the mines perhaps.

Lisa H. says:

03:42pm | 15/11/10

We employ some casuals, and we pay 25 per cent more as a loading. That is the award.
Before the labor government came in we felt very expansive in relation to both casuals and permanent staff, paid for nice uniforms, hold jobs open for people who come and go in overseas trips etc.

Now, the comeraderie between ‘boss’ and ‘staff’ seems to have almost completely gone, and all the extra money and effort we have spent in training and ‘cuddling’ our workforce seems to have disappeared in a puff of bad blood.

We personally work for a far lower per hourly rate than any of our staff, and always have done. Money is tight now, which puts us under a lot of strain.

For the effort and risk involved in business, we are subject to the kind of public hostility shown by St. Michael and his ilk.We are good people and deserve better in a social setting.

It is annoying to be lectured to by Ged, as if we did not know the benefit of treating people well. I also ‘work’ and would like to be paid at least an equal per-hourly rate as my senior staff.

While our permanent staff demand time off from their public contact jobs to pick up and drop off their children each day, we work.

I gave birth to my third child and my husband immediately left the hospital to work.
Some-one else had a rostered day off, and, no, they were not going to be flexible and take the shift for us, regardless of us just having a baby.
My husband worked without a break, on his feet all day when he had broken a bone in his foot! No-one would step up.

You might think from this that we must be indecent and unreasoning people, but we pay well above minimum wage levels and do our best to interact on a respectful level. We do what we can to make the work interesting and rewarding.

For this, we are treated with utter contempt at times.

A junior, whose training we paid for - without government incentive payments! - was on well above award payments for many years. Upon graduation, she demanded another promotion. We reluctantly told her we felt she had not really applied herself to her training and so would have to sit a simple in-house test, which she failed miserably. She quit immediately and had us closely examined by the Fair Work Commission for our trouble!

From what I see of the Australian political and cultural landscape it is all take when it comes to small business. Better simply to keep your head down, and stick your hand out for your lump of gruel just like every body else.

RasPutin says:

04:48pm | 15/11/10

Drizzle, or is that grizzle: I would weep for you,but i know that you will do what ever it takes to maximise your income. We assume you like conservative govs.because then you have all the power ,and you can screw your work force as much as you like…I hope i can sleep tonight instead of worrying about you and your travails..

St. Michael says:

05:26pm | 15/11/10

A few inconsistencies there, Lisa H.  First you say you pay “well above minimum wage”, but you’ve already said you pay 25% above to casuals because “that is the award”.  If there’s an award in place, that’s the minimum.  The minimum wage applies to bones-of-your-arse jobs, the absolute lowest amount Australian law will stand to be paid to a worker under the Federal system.  It doesn’t apply to award-covered industries.

Nobody forced you to go into small business.  That is your choice.  For a better sense of how much you’re earning, though, and how tight things are, would you like to set out for us your past few years’ worth of tax deductions claimed by your business, or tax refunds given because the business was running at a loss? Care to disclose the business’s profit margins, in fact open your books for us?

And presumably you wouldn’t still be in small business for the supposed hostility you’ve received.  Presumably it still returns a profit to make it worthwhile, or else why are you still in it?

I also doubt you were closely examined by anybody, because you would have remembered the correct name of the body that examined you.  But hey, I’ll cut you a break: was it the Fair Work Ombudsman, Fair Work Australia, the Workplace Ombudsman, or someone else? Disclose details of the award, the rate, the age of the junior, and what promotion s/he was seeking, and then we can look and see whether you were being hard done by or not.

Put it this way, for every angelic small business owner out there, there are a lot of owners who aren’t quite so nice or kind to their employees, and it has nothing to do with the employee’s job performance.  A lot of employees get asked to do things well outside their fields of responsibility.  Some get sacked for it.  Some are asked to do dishonest things, and get sacked for refusing.

St. Michael says:

12:40pm | 15/11/10

Whilst I don’t have a very large problem with most of this, Richard ... you did not just ask Robert Kiyosaki to build an educational system, did you?

A guy who can’t keep his own stories straight about his early life and who now admits—after years of lying about it—that Rich Dad may be nothing more than a myth?

For your edification: http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html

Mayday says:

05:03pm | 15/11/10

The rot began to set in once the Unfair Dismissal Laws were passed, full time permanent jobs have been the cost of not being able to dismiss staff.

Small business operates like a team and of one person is under performing it can affect everyone and a business can only operate like this for a couple of years before the proverbial wheels fall off.

Unfair Dismissal…... the term oxymoron comes to mind.

In regard to your last observation have you noticed the self serve checkouts at Coles and Woolworths? 
The silence from the Unions on this is deafening, school leavers, university students and people returning to the workforce will be the ones to miss out on a job.

We, the poor sucker shopper does all the work at the checkout now while often being spoken to by a machine with quite a tone in its voice and I for one don’t like it!  The “robot” is telling the humans what to do.

Ian says:

03:17pm | 15/11/10

Well done John - clearly you have nothing to say so you sledge immigrants.  Why are industrial relations standards here in Australia always compared to the worst countries like China or Cuba or Iran.  Industrial standards are better here in Australia because people were prepared to fight for them and to continue pursuing the advancement of workers’ rights.  It’s just a shame that so many people on here seem to forget that - the rights we have weren’t given to us, they were fought for.