Job Security
When Alan Joyce wakes up every morning, there is always the slim chance that several hundred people travelling in a metal tube branded with the Qantas insignia will have plummeted thousands of feet to their doom.
The CEOs of the Big Four Banks don’t have that problem. They fear falls of a less lethal kind. Wall Street plunges don’t kill. And unlike plane wrecks, there is always the chance of a rebound.
This might seem a dramatically ghoulish way to portray the inherent risks of two fundamentally different businesses, but it’s worth considering in light of Qantas’s paltry net profit of $43 million in the six months to December. Compare that to the $3 billion or so of the major banks and it’s like a Cessna to an A380.
Is your job less secure than the one you had five or 10 years ago? Are you a casual worker, or on a fixed-term contract or getting temporary work through a labour hire company? But, at the same time, are you working harder and longer hours than you were?
If so, it’s not just you, it’s the Australian workforce as a whole.
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 contracts, and in labour hire, as opposed to the normal definition of standard, permanent jobs.
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Alan Walters says:
I run a small to medium sized business and I guess the question for any society is what do they see as important: a robust economy or a financially obese labour pool. I for one take the Churchill line from the Breton Woods meetings; that debt and uncertainty are good… Read more »
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St. Michael says:
“people who are on contract or casual labour don’t get dismissed. So they cannot appeal under the Fair Work act if their contract isn’t renewed. This is wrong.” No, actually, it isn’t. It is the law in this country and was the accepted common law in all our courts prior… Read more »
Until the dramatic events of Friday night, the Baiada Poultry dispute in suburban Melbourne had not had the publicity of Qantas. That’s a shame because the gutsy fight by low-paid Baiada workers is just as important in the fight for fair treatment at work.
Media coverage has focused on the clashes between police and workers, but has ignored the basic issues at stake. A couple of hundred low-paid workers have been forced to take legal industrial action because their employer has refused to bargain with them.
They are taking collective action in an attempt to stop the spread of insecure work – and ensure that Baiada workers on low wages have some certainty around their jobs and basic rights to sick leave and holiday pay.
Continue reading "Baiada is playing chicken with livelihoods and lives" »
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Jill Morton. says:
Well count your blessings you have jobs, or is Baiada also moving to China like hundreds of other companies? What has the union done for the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs in the last few months because of Manufacturing companies closing down altogether or simply moving to… Read more »
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Been There, Seen All says:
Robert Smissen Of rural SA, when was it the last time you’ve worked at any of Baiada’s plants as a forklift operator to have an idea how it was to be trained not to drive/operate an unsafe forklift truck, asked to sign a form that you have been trained not… Read more »
The Australian economy is in danger of being torn apart by the resources boom.
The high prices being paid for our minerals, the unprecedented foreign investment to dig up those minerals and the rising value of the dollar are already reshaping our economy. This is only the beginning.
It will end, all booms do, but this one will take some time and it will bring great change.
Continue reading "The carbon tax won’t kill the economy, greedy miners will" »
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john says:
Somebody tell Greg Smith he didn’t run as the ALP candidate for New England Idiots abound and conservative fanboys are liars because that’s all they have. Read more »
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Labor is Toxic says:
You get what you vote for Joan. In saying this, the Labor Party is so hated in the Electorate of New England that they did not have a candidate in the electorate for the 2010 election. And who did Windsor give power to???? It would be so bad if they… Read more »
Alongside coal, steelmaking has dominated the Illawarra economy for the better part of a century. The industrial landscape of Port Kembla continues to define the lives of the people that work and live in its shadow, the people that I represent in the federal electorate of Throsby.
When I left high school in the early eighties, the Steelers NRL team was still running around in the top flight (before merging with St George), and many of my mates took up apprenticeships with the company that sponsored the famous scarlet jersey, BHP Steel.
We were a steel city, a proud working-class town, just like our sister city of Newcastle. In many respects we still are. But just like Newcastle and in the other manufacturing regions around Australia at that time, the ground was already shifting under our feet.
Continue reading "Sacked steelworkers, we will not abandon you" »
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acotrel says:
Aren’t BHP Billiton and Bluescope Steel effectively the same enitity? Perhaps if BHP had put something back into their Australian steel manufacturing to improve quality and efficiency, and thus competitiveness they’d have been in a better moral position to resist the Resources Rent Tax ? Have they left Australia workers… Read more »
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RyaN says:
Here is a question that has been floating around in my head with regards to the top polluters moving their operations offshore as predicted. If these companies move their operations offshore before the carbon tax kicks in next year does that mean they will still receive the promised compensation if… Read more »
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" »
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deb says:
i know a woman who worked twelve hours a day. rwo casual jobs.got to the point she was so tired and bitchy that she couldnt do either properly.she was sacked from one and nearly had a breakdown.couldnt see how to pay the rent ect…is this the aussie way? Read more »
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Gregg says:
It’s taken a while Ged for some mention of overseas markets and perhaps the reality is yet to be understood by yourself. The WTO level playing field principles mean that all that unequalness in wages is intended to be equalled and it’ll not mean that the people overseas will ever… Read more »
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