Employment

A mate of mine went on a family holiday to China in January. He relayed an interesting item from a local English language newspaper about a new pay deal which had been struck for manufacturing workers in Macau. Under the deal, the workers will be paid AUD $239. Not $239 a day. Not $239 a week. But $239 a month.

Factoids such as this are illustrative, and depressingly so, as countries such as Australia grapple with the future of manufacturing jobs. The current discussion about the future of the car industry has been complicated by the high Australian dollar, which is driving up the cost of everything we export.

Regardless of whether our dollar was at 70 cents or at parity with the greenback we would still be wrestling with the exact same problems of competition amid the unstoppable forces of globalisation.

Continue reading "Propping up car jobs won’t save them in the long run" »

Articles like this one from the The New York Times explore a facet of life in India that most visitors from the West will surely notice, and anyone that lives here will have to confront to some degree – having servants, or “help”.

I still don’t even like writing or saying the word. A lot of that undoubtedly has to do with some kind of privileged-white-person, colonial-style guilt. Perhaps it is just something I am simply not used to, having grown up in a middle-class household in Australia.

Whatever reason you want to attach to it, generally speaking I feel uncomfortable with someone serving me unless they are working in a restaurant or a hotel for a decent wage.

Continue reading "Are you being served? Would you like to be?" »

When the annual figures come out on the gender gap in salaries the standard argument is that women earn less because a) they take time off work to have kids, and b) they dominate lower-paid industries such as health and education.

While both those points are solid explanations for the gap, new figures that have nothing to do with either (a) or (b) show women graduates are paid less than the men who graduate from the same degrees - 14 per cent less.

Graduate Careers Australia found in 2011 graduate males started work on a full-time median salary of $52,000, and women on $50,000 (which could be accounted for by different industries). But in 14 industries male starting salaries were higher than female starting salaries in the same industry.

Continue reading "Maybe women are just bad at asking for a higher salary" »

Ah, the holidays. How good is it to relax on the couch to watch the cricket and – hang on, my phone’s beeping.

Gee, I’d better respond to some of those work emails.

And there are notifications on Twitter. Someone’s tagged a photo on Facebook. Looks like there’s a job offer via LinkedIn. And I should check out who’s on Google+ while I’m at it.

Seriously, do we ever turn off anymore?

Continue reading "We all need to tune in, turn off and chill out" »

The tired old chestnut of equal pay gets trotted out every time there are new job figures or the latest batch of income statistics are released.

“It’s a deplorable situation,’’ comes the plaintive cry. “Women still only earn X per cent of men’s wages.”

Don’t get me wrong, that would be deplorable - if it were true. But sadly it’s much more a case of creative mathematics than a widespread mysogynistic conspiracy.

Continue reading "Don’t give me that tired old equal pay chestnut" »

So, at last, and hopefully once and for all, women in the workplace no longer have to regard being a mother as some kind of dirty little secret.

Thanks to the frankness of Tanya Plibersek and Julie Collins, the idea that working mothers need to somehow disguise or apologise for their maternal status has been blown to smithereens. I, for one, am rapt.

News of this welcome development came in simple form last week; a single-sentence intro on a plain old news story, but one that felt a whole lot like a turning point.

Continue reading "Don’t keep Mum about being a working parent" »

Sue O’Reilly, who has guest written today’s column on The Angry Cripple is a freelance journalist. She co-founded Australians Mad as Hell last year with Fiona Porter to campaign for an NDIS and established a charity called Fighting Chance to help people with disabilities pay for essential therapy services.

Bill Moss was one of the highest paid business executives in Australian corporate history when he worked for Macquarie Bank, prior to his retirement in 2007 on health grounds.

As head of the bank’s real estate and banking division, Moss built - literally from scratch - an international real estate and funds management business that spanned five continents, created thousands of jobs and made billions for the bank’s investors, shareholders and, through tax payments, federal Treasury coffers.

So really, all Australians are pretty fortunate that the slowly degenerative physical disability with which this razor-sharp businessman was born - a form of muscular dystrophy known as FSHD - happened not to become overly evident (to others at least) until Moss was in his early 40s and had already established his credentials.

Continue reading "The heroic banker crusading to employ the disabled" »

Tony Abbott’s claim this week that only the “right kids” should be encouraged to stay in school misunderstands the jobs market, the needs of business and is not in the best interests of our kids.

It‘s true that not all young people want or need to go to university and they shouldn’t have to. But gone are the days when young people could finish Year 10 and walk into a job or a trade without qualifications.

Our economy has changed and employers increasingly desire higher levels of education and deeper levels of understanding. Think about the skills required by today’s mechanics, electricians and plumbers. Technical, computer and environmental changes mean these sorts of trades have become more complex and require a higher level of vocational skills.

Continue reading "The kids are alright, Tony" »

Sometimes a change creeps up so stealthily that you hardly notice how far it’s gone. That’s how I feel about insecure work, something that used to be restricted to small part of our workforce, but has now spread, like the crown of thorns starfish, to trap millions of Australian workers.

Today, the reality is that 40 per cent of Australians are in some kind of insecure work.

That’s the combination of people who are casual (which is a quarter of the workforce alone), on short-term or other contracts, and in labour hire, as opposed to the normal definition of permanent jobs – with all the conditions and entitlements that come with them – that were the norm until a few years ago.

Continue reading "A secure job is no luxury" »

Jobs are being lost, buildings are closing; hundreds of people are moving overseas.

Australian manufacturing is facing a major slump, with thousands more jobs expected in light of the carbon tax policy - especially in places like the La Trobe Valley in Victoria.

According to recent research from the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance, less than nine per cent of the one million manufacturing workforce are employed by firms that will receive compensation for the carbon tax.

Continue reading "One green job created, 3.7 jobs destroyed elsewhere" »

ACTU President Ged Kearney announced at the National Press Club the results of a poll of union members grandiosely labelled “The Census”. And she also talked about it yesterday on The Punch. But far from being an impartial look at the Australian workplace, the ACTU’s census is nothing but a narrow poll of self-selected participants.

The headlines shouted “Australian workers productive but stressed”. The findings to emerge from The Census included that respondents were working longer, finding it difficult to get by on their income, delaying dental treatment and were contacted about work outside of work hours. An overwhelming majority supported unions campaigning for better pay and conditions of workers.

The Census survey methodology is instructive.

Continue reading "Australians are working less and earning more" »

When I first entered the workforce some two decades ago, becoming a union leader wasn’t even on my radar.

I became a nurse to help other people and contribute to my community. Funnily enough, in a different way, that’s still what I’m doing today.

I stumbled into unionism because of my belief that collectively, we can achieve progressive change in our workplaces and for society. That remains my motivation today. It’s the same for the thousands of union delegates who are at work every day, not just doing their own jobs, but ensuring fair treatment for their workmates.

Continue reading "Unions: out there fighting for ordinary Aussies every day" »

I’m not sure exactly where the ‘back room’ is. But it must be big. If you’re reading this on a computer in an office, you might even be in the ‘back room’. And if you are – according to most politicians and media commentators – you are basically useless and easily dispensable. Feeling good about yourself?

In the budget this week, the NSW Government announced it would abolish 5000 public service jobs. Not any particular jobs, just a general cull of ‘head office and back room’ workers.

The terrible loss of steel-making jobs in the Illawarra drew widespread concern just a couple of weeks ago. But announcements of cuts to the public service are usually met with something between ‘whatever’ and ‘triple it!’. Unless it’s your job in the firing line, which is why public sector workers and their unions have been a bit toey lately.

Continue reading "Out of sight, out of mind, now out of work" »

Hit movie Horrible Bosses has gotten people talking about bosses, and about work culture in general. Here at Punch central, we thought we’d take things a step further and devote the bulk of our site today to the subject.

The Punch is an unusual workplace, in that the boss performs many of the same duties as the junior team members, and vice versa. At various times during the day, the boss will moderate comments, while all staff members lend their news judgement to the story mix.

In this respect, we do not have the typical vertical boss/employee power dynamic. Do you? We’d love to hear your thoughts about what makes a good boss, a bad boss, and whether you’ve ever seriously thought about killing your boss, as in the movie. Hey, even here at The Punch there are days when we’ve thought about it…

In the movie Horrible Bosses, the three bosses are characterised as The Psycho, The Maneater and The Tool. As bad as they sound, I’ve had worse. Three in particular stand out. I’m going to call them Cruel Boss, Angry Boss and Scaredycat Boss.

None of my horrible bosses were good bosses by any stretch. Yet years down the track, I feel like thanking them. That’s not to say I was happy working for them. I was miserable, and that misery often followed me home.

But through pain comes resilience. Through resilience comes strength. Through strength comes resolve. And through resolve comes the determination never to be the sort of person who abuses power relationships in the workplace.

Continue reading "Three horrible bosses, and how they made me stronger" »

Being the boss is no picnic. People come to you with problems, complaints, conflicts and issues – constantly. And then you still have the rest of your job to do as well as a manager of your own to deal with.

I get it, but your compensation is a higher salary (sometimes a lot higher), status, perks and greater control over your work day so suck it up. If you are not up for the job, don’t take it on. And if you are getting overwhelmed, get help.

Australian companies are well-known for selecting managers on their technical ability rather than their people management skills.

Continue reading "Welcome to the big chair. Now prove you deserve it" »

About seven years ago I came into the office on a Thursday to discover that I was the boss.  My appointment would be announced the next day, and I would start on the Monday.

I would be heading an organisation which had 245 staff. Many of them were among my best friends. A couple of them I didn’t much care for. Some of them I had never met.

I’m writing this today because my Punch colleagues have designated this Friday as Boss Day, and they wanted a piece about what it’s actually like to be the head honcho. And anyway, someone has to stick up for the bastards.

Continue reading "Oops, I’m the boss" »

Great bosses send you emails full of praise. Smile when they see you. Give you feedback on everything and take you out to lunch.  A bad boss tries to own your thoughts.

Two different men, in two very different jobs, over the past two weeks were fired for posting stuff on their individual social media accounts that their employers found inappropriate.

Continue reading "Your boss does not own your thoughts" »

Our politicians need our help. They’re overworked.

According to news.com.au, Federal politicians “who ride in taxpayer-financed cars to board taxpayer-financed flights to get to work, say a tight schedule and winter fog is forcing them to leave their families early and forgo functions in electorates to fly to Canberra on Sunday evenings”.

They also suffer in their jocks with dismal pay, appalling superannuation, and disgusting Parliamentary offices. And their bosses are nitpicking bastards.

Continue reading "Tiny violins are playing for our politicians" »

Carl Thompson is a 21-year-old with cerebral palsy and scoliosis who is undertaking honours in marketing. He writes for ABC’s Ramp Up, DiVine Victoria and blogs here.

We in Australia always follow the English. This makes sense, I suppose, from a historical viewpoint as many of us are descendants of convicts from the mother country.

We share many cultural similarities; most TV broadcast in Australia on the ABC is British. We both sensibly drive on the left hand side of the road, and the beautiful game of cricket is the national sport in both countries.

We have a penchant for chips (not fries), kebabs and curries, as do the English. And finally, our political systems and structures are also quite similar - we even share the same Queen.

Continue reading "I’m not a dole bludger, I just want to work" »

There’s no way taxpayers should be supporting fit young people to lounge around for years on the dole, smoking joints and listening to Pink Floyd.

And no one wants their hard-earned being spent on a wannabe writer who houseshares with other ‘creatives’ living the dream while we eke out a meagre office-bound existence, soothed only by Friday night drinks and dreams of what might have been.

And we’ll be damned if we pay tax after levy after carbon price while someone who has ‘self esteem’ issues can’t get out of bed before lunch.

Continue reading "Abbott’s new era of work for the proles" »

As the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day approaches, we can and should celebrate a century of achievements for women, both small and gigantic.

But no-one could say gender equality is ‘done and dusted’. As we celebrate, we should pause to acknowledge the areas in which there has been insufficient progress, including in our working lives.

Our workplaces are still fraught with gender pay inequity, an underrepresentation of women in leadership positions, unequal treatment of men and women with caring responsibilities and the omnipresent scourge of sexual harassment.

Continue reading "When domestic violence comes to work" »

Is there one clear possible area of policy reform that would provide a good basis for making society more civil? A core issue that affects a range of social well being indicators and our life choices? Could too much to do and longer working hours be at the heart of the discontents and social inadequacies of contemporary life?

Reducing standard working hours would challenge some basic political and social assumptions such as the ways our time is allocated between paid work and the rest of our lives. In most developed nations, we have moved in the opposite direction, from long-term commitments to reduce standard working hours (48 hours to 35) in the last century to implicit support for ever longer working hours. 

I remember debates in the 60s and 70s about how we might use the increased leisure that we expected to come from technological change and automation. 

Continue reading "Hands up who wants a 30-hour working week" »

Twenty years I’ve been in the workforce. That’s 20 years of deadlines, jumping on planes, working late into the night and, ultimately, furthering the fortunes of companies and proprietors who are decent enough – sorry, lucky enough – to have me.

During those two decades, how many times do you reckon I’ve asked for a pay rise? Most years? Biannually? Nope. Just once.

Not a savvy thing to admit, but a quick ask around friends and colleagues reveals the same: Women don’t ask for pay rises.

Continue reading "Sisters should ask for pay rises themselves" »

As far back as I remember, I was never really interested in going to work or keeping a steady job. At the age of 20, I had graduated from University with a degree in Bugger All, and I had planned to be a dog walker for the wealthy – preferably for randy lonely old women living in the Eastern Suburbs and who didn’t have time to walk their terriers between yoga and brunch.

When I ended up in the hospital after one day of walking ‘Max’, I came to two conclusions: First, never interrupt a dog mating; Second, I needed a new job.

All this got me thinking about what my perfect job would be. Unlike all my other friends with a BA, I had no interest in working at a bank. So instead, I decided I would help save the planet.

Continue reading "The weird things we do to put bread on the table" »

Notwithstanding the political sensitivities around the day, January 26 should be a time to consider where we’ve come from, what we’ve been through and who we are today.

So what have we got?

You’ll hear about larrikinism, but no one is 100 per cent sure what it means. And just like mateship, let’s face it: it’s a little blokey.

Continue reading "Fair go: a national character we can be proud of" »

Yesterday I wrote to Prime Minister Julia Gillard expressing concern about a report in The Economic Times,  that Australia intends to ‘target’ Chandigarh, Punjab and other cities in northern India with a promotional campaign in 2012 looking to attract skilled migrants.

I told the Prime Minister I do not want the number of skilled migrants to increase, and do not support Australia running promotional campaigns to try to attract migrants.

I cannot see how running promotional campaigns to attract skilled migrants is consistent with the Prime Minister’s pre-election statements that she does not believe in a ‘Big Australia’ and that ‘we need to stop and take a breath’.  I also think this pre-empts the Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia being developed by Population Minister Tony Burke.

Continue reading "Why Gillard is wrong to encourage skilled migration" »

There are a lot of tricks and short cuts taken in modern discourse, with its short attention span and abundance of professional spin doctors. In particular, when discussing policy there is a certain word which is often uttered as if it was magic spells that can silence one’s detractors.

The word is “jobs”. It is increasingly favoured by politicians and rent-seeking lobby groups, but are we finally becoming too skeptical for it to work?

Whenever the debate turns to an economic issue, this word is sure to surface early on in the rhetoric for or against any proposal. It is implicit in such an argument that whichever decision creates more jobs must be the right one. Unemployment is, after all, a calamity we would hardly wish on our worst enemy. The more jobs, the better things must be for Australians and our economy.

Continue reading "The threat of job cuts is a smokescreen" »

Are you on annual leave right now? If so, you’re already doing better than one third of Australians who toil on through the entire year without taking a breath.

And there’s a very good chance you’re ruining your break entirely.  Be honest – have you checked your Blackberry or your iPhone or your remote email account?

Did you take a call that related to work? Did you get online to check something work-related? Then you’re not really on leave.

Continue reading "If you’re reading this you’re not on holiday" »

When Christmas Day becomes just another work day, you would have to say that the free market has finally spun out of control.

While it’s no surprise that big business tries to squeeze every last cent out of workers, we hope for something a little bit better from government. That’s why its so shocking that in some states, this Christmas won’t be a public holiday.

Since time immemorial civilisations have centred around core beliefs and values that shape their society.  They tell us who we are and what we want to be. To celebrate and share these values, every culture has developed its own calendar of special and holy days.

Continue reading "Governments stealing Christmas from workers" »

Does Australia need a Quota Law? Most would say ‘no’ – just as they did in Norway when it was introduced. Now that at least 40 percent of board seats on Norwegian Public Listed Companies are held by women, the Quota Law is widely accepted across Norway as a reform ‘they had to have’.

But has it produced a result down the food chain? A recent study has said ‘not at this stage’, questioning if quotas are required at management and executive levels or if the marketplace and gender conscious Norwegian society will address this imbalance.

The Quota Law requiring companies to appoint 40 percent of the under-represented gender to their boards was announced by the Norwegian Minister for Trade and Industry in a conservative government, in 2002 and approved by Parliament in 2003.

Continue reading "Is a quota for boards reform we “have to have”?" »

The average executive salary is 100 times more than the average worker’s—and widening—according to ACTU figures. We’re told that bank CEOs’ loot-bags are bulging with the run-off from excess rate rises and capricious ATM fees.

But like so many social issues, the real battleground may be taking place outside of the political and news-based arena. It’s the mainstream popular media where opinions can be shaped and slippery messages fed to the young and the passive.

Ten’s “Undercover Boss Australia”—recently renewed for a second season—is a prime example of cynical corporate interests being delivered as “entertainment”. And yet it gets a free pass in the cultural debate over workers’ conditions, pay rates and CEO salary obscenity. In an environment where popular media isn’t considered to be worth serious discussion, we’re just expected to lap it up, not to talk about it.

Continue reading "The feel-good TV show hiding corporate reality" »

It costs nearly $1 million dollars more to be born a woman in this country. While the average 25 year old male will earn $2.4 million over the next 40 years, the average 25 year old woman will earn only $1.5 million.

Of course there are a number of reasons for this gender pay gap. Women are more likely to work part time, take more time out of the workforce to undertake unpaid caring responsibilities and continue to bear a disproportionate share of the responsibility for unpaid household work.

Traditionally feminised jobs in the caring and community sectors have been historically undervalued and consequently, underpaid.

Continue reading "Claims we’ve gone soft on equal pay are rubbish" »

To some Australians the high dollar is cause for celebration.

A great way to pick up a bargain over the internet or a cheap holiday overseas. But for many, including 100 workers at Caterpillar in suburban Melbourne last week, it means watching your industry become less competitive and suddenly finding yourself out of a job.

The cause of the high dollar is Australia’s mining boom.

Continue reading "A high dollar carries an even higher price" »

Here’s an offer too good to refuse.  Start work at 6.30 – if you’re lucky – with no idea how many minimum-wage hours you’ll work.

You are there because your employer last night sent out a text message telling you there was a shift available.  Every night you wait for your text to tell you if you’ll be working the next day or not.

You know that even if you ask for something simple, like a couple of days off for the birth of your child, there’s a solid chance your job won’t be there for you when you return.

Continue reading "Precarious job security is not confined to the third world" »

If you’re reading this consider yourself lucky. You’ve managed to find time out of a stressful work day to squeeze in a moment of media consumption despite a new study finding we’re all working way too hard and far too much.

The Australian Institute survey Long time, no see will no doubt provoke a round of handwringing from social researchers using it as proof that Australia is slave to a brutal corporate beast that eats up families and destroys “community”.  This will be accompanied by calls to move toward a more European model of work, replete with biweekly cheese fairs in our new found tight knit villages.

The glaring problems with this survey and others like it are not the results, but the fact that there’s no recognition of the gap between what people say they want, what they actually want and what they’re willing to do about it.

Continue reading "Are we working too much or just whingeing more?" »

Some people really just shouldn’t open their mouths in public - a woman called Emanuela D’Annibale is one of them.

D’Annibale was trying to fix a major PR problem she’d created for the brilliant new Generation One initiative to increase indigenous employment, when she managed to make things oh so much worse.

She told this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald that the reason she hadn’t hired a young indigenous woman she thought was too white to represent Generation One was because “I wouldn’t have picked her for Aboriginal at all ... to me she looked like an Aussie girl.” As opposed to all those un-Aussie indigenous women I suppose.

Continue reading "To fight institutional racism, start with the idiots" »

Wake up. Snooze, sleep. Repeat 3 times (may vary). Get out of bed. Wash (optional). Breakfast (optional). Coffee (necessary).

Take ironed shirt from night before, tuck into pants. Place belt around said pants. Get tie fitting right, add shoes, hair and makeup (optional).

Wallet, keys, iPhone/Blackberry/mp3 player and out the door.

Continue reading "Missing the straitjacket" »

Competition in corporate Australia has always been fierce.  Everyone wants the best people, systems, products and services.

But behind the smiles and claims to the contrary, everyone from the Chairman down wants to get one up on their direct competitors on every metric that matters. 

At stake are bonuses, bragging rights and most important of all, continued survival in the corporate jungle.

Continue reading "Indigenous skills: let market forces triumph" »

In 2007/2008, the creative industries contributed $31.1 billion in industry gross product to the Australian economy, which is equivalent to 2.8% of GDP, and employed 316,600 workers.

The creative industries achieved an average annual growth rate of 5.8% over the last 11 years to 2007/2008, well above the annual growth rate for the broader economy of 3.6% over the same period. The Software Development and Interactive Content segment is responsible for much of this growth, accounting for 43.8% of earnings and 38.3% of jobs in 2007/2008.

The games industry in particular is a fast-growth industry in which Australian opportunities are shaped by large international enterprises. This growth is dependent on sustaining a pool of highly skilled workers. Technical creative and business skills have been in high demand over the last decade. However, a serious shortage of skilled employees is a major factor contributing to the almost $2 billion trade deficit in Australia’s digital content industry.

Continue reading "We’re not the clever country if we’re not a creative country" »

In the world of employment, the growing skills shortage is like a low, black cloud building on the horizon.

While the GFC slowed the demand for labour it didn’t change the fact our workforce is ageing. In a few years more people leaving the workforce in Australia than joining it.

As workplace age management expert Alison Monroe quipped recently, “the only thing that changed during the GFC is that boomers got two years closer to retirement.”

Continue reading "Gen Y might rule the world sooner than we thought" »

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released what it calls a study of “estimates of personal income for small areas.” For ease however we will call it our shameless guide to class warfare and rich people’s suburbs.

View Larger Map

According to the study - conducted between 2003-04 and 2007-08 - the North Sydney waterside suburb of Mosman has the highest average income in the country at $131,606. If a suburb with an average income like that isn’t reference point enough, the national average is $44,402.

Second are the battlers of Woollahra in East Sydney on $116,376.  One begins to feel a bit dirty heading over to Hunters Hill on a mere $95,027, and then if you would actually want to be seen there you can get into North Sydney on $83,997 and Ku-ring-gai at $82,195.

Continue reading "The Punch guide to our rich suburbs and big houses" »

Headhunters have been digging around digital dirt, ever since Google became a verb. Since there’ll be a few politicians looking for new jobs after the election, I thought it’d be amusing to analyse their tweets from an employment perspective and ask “would I, as a headhunter, offer a politician a job based on their twittering?” 

I’ll disclose from the outset that my analysis is based on no more than my past six months hanging out in the twitter-verse building up my business, and from my time as a recruiter. For something more sensible and scholarly take a read of this research: Social media and the 2007 Australian election.

Continue reading "What pollies’ Tweets tell us about their employability" »

With the major parties flexing their muscles on border protection, the Australian public has sent Canberra a message that it is the protection of Australian jobs that is the real security issue for them.

In what looms as the sleeper issue for the 2010 election campaign, a quarter of all voters placed “Australian jobs and the protection of local industries” as key election issue, behind only economic management and health.

As the latest Essential Report shows that economic protectionism towers over headline-grabbing issues like climate change, asylum seekers, housing affordability, industrial laws and population growth as a priority election issue.

Continue reading "Even with a strong economy, jobs are a top concern" »

This week marks National Career Development Week (17-23 May), with the aim of encouraging all Australians to take responsibility for managing and developing their own journey towards a fulfilling and prosperous career – an ideal very close to my heart.

The theme of the week this year is ‘get the life you love’ which sounds like an obvious proposition, but is so easily lost among young people just starting out in the career world.

Following a passion can fall down when kids aren’t aware of the paths available to them to help with a smooth transition beyond the classroom, and confidence wanes. Instead, it can be easy to settle for a future which a young adult would never have expected to pursue as a child.

Continue reading "Choosing your own life" »

If you haven’t already seen the graphic below take a minute to have a look.

This is an explanation the United States’ plan for victory in Afghanistan, and formed part of a PowerPoint presentation given by the US Military to some of its top brass.

This PowerPoint presentation is not only emblematic of what may have gone wrong in Afghanistan, but, without wanting to sound too alarmist, what’s gone wrong with the way we’re being taught to think.

Continue reading "How PowerPoint slides ruined the world" »

When Charles “Chicka” Dixon passed away last month, Australia lost a vigorous advocate for Aboriginal rights. Chicka was an agitator and a unionist but he was also a realist who understood that to get ahead Indigenous people needed skills and training and opportunity.

But this training had to be real and translate to actual work. Aboriginal people are among the most trained people in this country, yet they represent the highest unemployed.

Chicka Dixon and I would have disagreed on many things, but on that point he could not have been more right.

Continue reading "Chicka Dixon knew education was the key to closing the gap" »

When Tony Abbott announced his paid parental leave policy on Monday, I – like many of those at the International Women’s Day celebration hosted by Manly Council – was taken by surprise. For the 15 minutes before he took my place on the podium, I had been speaking about the challenges Australia faces in creating a society that better values children, and in particular the need to better support the critical dual contribution of mothers in exercising their skills within the workplace and nurturing the next generation of Australians at home. 

Much has been written this week around the pros and cons of Tony’s policy, most of it scathing and very little of it constructive. What impressed me were his opening remarks that seem to have been lost amid the frenzied discussion his announcement generated in the media.

Having been associated with the infamous statement back in 2002 that compulsory paid maternity leave would be introduced ‘over this government’s dead body’, I was heartened to hear Tony’s admission that he had since learnt, from research and a variety of sources close to him, the critical importance of the early years and the attachment of mother and baby in laying the foundations for the social and economic future of the nation.

Continue reading "Maternity leave: why progress depends on values" »

The story of the ‘great Australian sickie’ made it around the world this week, spreading the fallacy that half a million Aussies faked sore throats and tummy bugs to get a long weekend.

Direct Health Solutions – apparently a ‘leader in Positive Absence Management and Corporate Wellness Solutions’ (what the?) – was given a massive free kick with their Australia Day absenteeism ‘estimate’.

Then the Retailers Associations’ Scott Driscoll really got the headlines pumping, labelling the sickie-takers ‘unAustralian bums’.

Continue reading "In defence of sickies" »

THE German or Japanese languages may have one, but there is no word in English which accurately conveys the crushing, overwhelming sense of misery felt at the end of a good holiday.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’ve had one week off or four, whether you love or hate your job. The first day back at work always feels like a special kind of hell when you wistfully recall where you were and what you were doing a week or so prior.

Talking to a mate yesterday, who like me was on his first day back after a three-week break, it struck us how so much of this dislike of modern work doesn’t stem from some irrational hatred of having a job. Instead, it’s to do with a justifiable sense of frustration at the way we are often compelled to do our jobs.

Continue reading "Too busy holding meetings to do any actual work" »

What do employers really want?

After interviewing 25 hiring managers I am still slightly confused.

We asked all the questions anyone applying for a job should ask a prospective employer, hoping we’d find some simple – even sexily digestible– answers.

Continue reading "Seven things employers really want" »

Credit card bill hurt?  Rate hikes hitting the mortgage payments?  Tired of endless waits on hold or in your local branch?

Fret not.  It’s all for a cause. Not yours, of course.  Our big banks.  Why, they’re so grown up, it’s like bonus season on Wall Street.  Makes you proud to be an Aussie.
Sure, wage increases for bank workers hover around 1-2 per cent. Yes, 5000 jobs have been off-shored. True, dividends are down 20 per cent. But spare a thought for Cameron Clyne, CEO of NAB.  He only made $14,246 a day last year.  A pygmy among the seven or eight figure giants - if you don’t include smaller banks like ME.

Continue reading "Please, dig deep for our bank chief executives" »

What a huge news week it was last week. Sabi the dog came home. Tiger Woods fever gripped the country, and like Ol’ Man River our Australian economy keeps just keep rolling along.

With apologies to Tiger I know we’re not out of the woods yet and nobody’s taking the hands off the wheel, but it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on our achievement as a nation.

Last week’s jobs figures came in at 5.8%. 670,000 unemployed Australians is too many and we expect that unemployment will continue to rise in the coming months. But the community resilience in the face of this threat has been fantastic.

Continue reading "Bennelong, where jobs prove the stimulus is working" »

Here’s a quiz for your readers. How many green jobs did Kevin Rudd announce at the Labor Party Conference and how many of them were new?

Many readers of the Punch could be forgiven for thinking they heard the Prime Minister promise to deliver 50 000 new green jobs.

Unfortunately like so many of the Government’s announcements about a large array of job creation and training programmes it pays to read the fine print.

Continue reading "Labor’s green jobs promise is a huge lie" »

In a speech to Young Labor seven months ago I said that generations were often unfairly criticised by the ones which preceded them.

The young adults of Generation Y are often generalised as being plagued by apathy and indifference.

They’re sometimes called lazy and ungrateful for the many perceived advantages they have over earlier generations.

Continue reading "My speech on Gen Y was about tough love" »

When I was 19, I started mapping out my career plans. I was in my second year of university when I decided to volunteer as an unpaid intern for two full days per week at a magazine publishing house. My baby-boomer father never understood how I could do it for two years without pay (while working weekends in retail, where yes, I dealt with the worst customers imaginable and cleaned up kid vomit from the floor of my store), but I had faith in the fact that it would one day pay off.

One day was not this week, because this week, Employment Minister Mark Arbib is urging Gen Y to readjust their ideas about work and employment, stop the “snobbery” associated with certain means of work, and take whatever jobs they could get. For someone whose attitude to work has more to do with paying university fees and funding my internet bill than snobbery and a class act on the career ladder, Senator Arbib’s comments did not go down too well. And I was not the only one to notice.

Generation Y has long bore the brunt of the attention-seeking, lazy, power-hungry generation that refused to put in the hard yards for their future, something which the Senator might have capitalised on in his address to a young labor conference last week. What he failed to recognise is the fact that Generation Y has suffered long enough as a result of this stereotype, and as such, was ditching conventional forms and methods of work in favour of something that works for them.

Continue reading "Gen Y is picky? You call it snobbery, we call it tactic" »