Employment
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’.
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" »
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rob says:
Why do we all hate our jobs so much? I found that meetings were really just a forum where the firm found out who did not articulate the “party line”. Read more »
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Tombarina says:
What appalling cynicism. I find meetings very useful. Particularly for inventing ludicrous management-jargon corporate-speak, which I then helpfully introduce into the discussion. Next time the agenda’s grinding to a halt, try suggesting that “an actionable platform would be to embrace full operationalisationing of the functionosity journey - thereby harnessing cascade… Read more »
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.
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Deteste Personnelle says:
Papanchango is so right it makes me feel ill. Read more »
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DB says:
Good one Ruby “and our sphere of influence” Please spare us your self riotousness. Nice post Papachango totally agree! Read more »
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" »
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Nick Bankworker says:
Yet again the greed of the bank’s CEO’s shines through,while i work unpaid overtime(its viewed as not being part of the team if you don’t stay to finish off things and help fellow workers catch up) i get a subsistance pay raise of 4%.Times are hard we are told and… Read more »
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Jenny says:
I wonder what they do with that amount of money, I mean how can you spend that much? Are they reinvesting it in shares in their own company to again reap more rewards!! As Suzanne said we would retire if that sort of income was received. There definitely should be… Read more »
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" »
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Joel B1 says:
hoofman says: “Must be a slow day for the staff of Liberal MPs judging by the comments here. So slow they’ve had to take a break from attacking each other “ Nothing to say about the fluff piece then hoofman? Why bother commenting if you aren’t referring to the article?… Read more »
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stephen says:
Think next you better write an article on Fat Blokes, Maxine. Get a better quality response. Read more »
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" »
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johnv_au says:
This is called in political circles spin we will create jobs fix the hospital system its what we in the real world do when the wife askes to fix some thing around the house we say yes dear but have no intentions of doing it Or we will patch it… Read more »
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Toddzilla says:
Darren, you clearly don’t know what the word Orwellian means. In fact, Workchoices is almost the exact opposite of Orwellian as it was based on freedom of choice rather than compulsion. You might argue that the ALP’s IR policies are Orwellian and you’d be much closer to the mark. Read more »
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" »
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G says:
Go Mark, at least your keeping up the team’s ‘standard’ of really really poor performance. If you keep it up you will be almost as un-popular as Stephen Conroy MP actually no, that’s not possible) or Jenny Macklin MP. Way to go Labor party ... Read more »
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casey says:
Others will underestimate us. For although we judge ourselves by what we feel we are capable of, others judge us only by what we have done. - Henry Wadsworth I was at last year’s Young Labor Conference and Senator Arbib described my Generation as the ‘Net Generation’, the generation that… Read more »
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" »
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Celeste says:
Like Dan I as a quallified Beauty therapist couldn’t get a job anywhere because he didn’t have “the experience”, and was never given the opportunity to actually earn it. Another Gen Y fave, Yet I have been working in a supermarket for the last six (6) years. Read more »
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Gillian says:
Interesting article Sarah. The phrase ‘Gen Y’ seems to trigger off a lot of emotions. In this article, Sarah demonstrated with the help of a few examples that Gen Y aren’t always lazy, have a sense of ‘self entitlement’ or expect everything to be handed to them on a silver… Read more »
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