Those evil unions, they’re all so rigid, so stuck in the past. They still believe that negotiating should at least involve, you know, negotiating; that deals should involve trading something for another thing. WorkChoices, on the other hand offers us all the flexibility to have exactly the same conditions as everyone else, and the right to give up some of our conditions without being forced to accept something else to compensate for the loss.
The Howard Government has provided us all with an exciting opportunity choice to have exactly the same crappy agreement as everyone else. Flexible! Individual! Just as long as it’s black…
According to Julia Gillard:
Casual employees at Darrell Lea are being asked to sign an AWA which cuts casual loading, weekend and public holiday penalty rates, rostering protections and sick leave.
There is no increase in the hourly rate of pay to compensate for the loss of all these conditions and there is also no entitlement to a pay increase over the five year life of the Agreement.
Darrell Lea has expressly stated that it has offered exactly the same AWA to every casual employee and has not sought to negotiate terms and conditions individually.
Happy Birthday, WorkChoices!
Update: Another reason to celebrate
Mr Peter Olah, National Affairs Manager of the Hotel and Motel Accommodation Association, made a surprise admission before a parliamentary enquiry into the tourism sector today in Sydney.
In his evidence to the House of Representatives Committee for Employment and Workplace Relations, Mr Olah conceded that Work Choices now simply made lawful, conduct which had been illegal in the industry before.
In his answer to a question as to why his Association supported the Work Choices legislation, he admitted that there was a high prevalence of employers failing to comply with their legal obligations.
When asked directly by Brendan O’Connor, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations, he agreed that the introduction of Work Choices simply allowed employers to conduct themselves lawfully in a way that had been unlawful before.
Mr Olah bluntly agreed that the best way of dealing with the problem of non-compliance was to make legal what had previously been illegal.
Mr O’Connor said “Mr Olah’s evidence today on behalf of the Hotel and Motel Accommodation Association confirms Labor’s worst fears.
“Clearly, this admission undermines the Government’s rhetoric that Work Choices is fair for employees, and highlights how unfair and unbalanced these laws really are.”
So, What’s wrong with that? If people think they should be paid more than Darrell Lea is prepared to offer, they should go and find a job which pays them what they think they are worth! It’s that simple really.
If people don’t like this logic, they should vote against the government. If they think that the labour market should be permitted to operate as a kind of lowest bid auction for employment in the less skilled services sector, then they will be cheering Darrell Lea on, because that employer is merely taking advantage of what the laws have to offer. It would be irresponsible if they didn’t.
However if people think that the low skilled sectors do not influence the overall ‘price’ of labour in general, then they haven’t been paying attention.
So, unless you are no longer dependent on wages and salaries or the pension, for your living, you are also facing a long term decline in the price of what you sell on the labour market, irrespective of your ‘human capital’.
Have I missed something? There are people being offered $20 per hour as BASE PAY.
I have never dealt with an award which pays that much.
The problem isn’t the pay rate (which is actually pretty good). It’s the fact that they only have to earn $6000 before they start paying tax on it. The Howard government’s got the wrong end of the stick: for the electorate to buy labor market reform, the tax free threshold must be at least doubled. I suspect Australia is already on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Howard opening his standard election war chest will only make it worse.
Workchoices…Why plural? If you take the highway it aint work.
For casual work, Steve.
What if we start a movement to get our politicians onto individual workplace agreements? That way we could pay them what we think they are worth, and they could justify what they earn (including allowances for travel, staff, postage, etc) to us, their employer. Somehow I think that Joe Hockey would be the first to say how the idea that apparently makes such sense for everyone else would in no way be appropriate for pollies…
Cheers…
I hope this never happens, however I wonder how long it will be before some employee , stewing on being forced into an agreement they didn’t want, goe’s a little crazy and damages either human or other at their place of work or outside of , and to hell with the consequence. The Rodent should but won’t take note of his wet dream of an American Australia, and the repercussions that may/will some day happen as happens in his bestest mates country on a regular basis. This old fool of course could not give a rats, sorry, all he wants is his ideals before he is given the shove,and the average Australian can get stuffed.
Here’s why it’s called Workchoices
http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,21468262-31037,00.html
Remember what I keep telling you all?
There are still some troglodytes left here at LP that apparently want to shackle employer and employee together forever by force or severe penalty. They used to call it slavery as I recall. Welcome to the promised land. Free at last, free at last! Well just as soon as we get any interference whatsoever, by well meaning bureaucrats, unions, etc right out of mutual agreement on labour relations we will. In the meantime we have some small progress in that direction, which is showing up in the best employment data for a generation you’ll notice.
Let the market and freedom of association reign.
The Rodent has in fact established a paradise for government control freaks.
1. WorkChoices has banned patterned agreements. Why can’t employers and employees be trusted to decide whether or not these are suitable in individual work places?
2. WorkChoices has banned the inclusion of unfair dismissal clauses into AWAs. Why can’t employers and employees be trusted to decide whether or not these are suitable in individual work places?
The answer is that Howard doesn’t believe in the market and Howard doesn’t believe in freedom of association.
Howard has made manifest his small-minded, punitive, classist psyche.
And what an ugly, unprepossessing sight it is.
Libertarians should be ashamed of associating with Howard.
There is one slight snag in all this mutual agreement stuff of course. The boss knows exactly what all workers collectively want to pay for his particular worker’s widgets in the marketplace, whilst his workers think they should be paid like Beckham. The boss knows instinctively they’re bending it somewhat here, but nothing like Beckham. It’s a case of breaking it to them diplomatically and repeatedly of course. A bit like bringing up teenagers really.
Well there you go. Howard’s Brave New Workplace: Treating employees like teenagers (for their own good of course).
Don’t worry Katz, we already are (voted for Howard in 96, didn’t vote in 98, wasn’t in Aus in 2001).
Errrrrgh.
I’ll second that. My student allowance alone put me over the TFT by almost double! And that’s just money I was getting from the Government in the first place. It should be raised to an extent where it actually makes a significant difference for low income families and individuals. And it should be indexed to CPI.
Screw that…. workchoices will probably need a negative income tax to make it work eventually…
Who is kidding who with comments like these:
The “boss” in fact will charge whatever he thinks he can get away with – that helps explain why the identical product is priced differently in different places. Try, for example, buying the same basket of groceries in Lane Cove or Double Bay on one hand, and in Campbelltown or Liverpool on the other. Retail pricing is all about what the market can/will bear, not about the costs of production and getting a fair/reasonable return on capital. And most workers do not try to “bend it like Beckham”. They usually take what they are offered, knowing full well that they are neither well enough informed or powerful enough to dispute the boss. If they insist on standing up for their rights as workers, then they are faced with the comment from the boss that “there are plenty of people out there who would be glad to work at this job if you don’t want to do the job for what I am offering. Like most free market theories, mutual agreements and AWAs sound a lot better in theory than they work in practice.
Cheers….
Unemployment statistics are as fraudulant as they are FLAWED. I am really fed up with Howard’s cheer squad banging on about the low rate of unemployment. It is utter crap. Not unlike the crap about the enormous wealth the resources boom is creating, (for less than 10% of the population). I really wish people would recognise that. I am currently on the dole. I worked two days in the last fortnight, which is enough to take me out of unemployment stats, but I still collected a reduced dole, (lousy bludger that I am). Its barely worth working two days a week, to be about $50 better off. I’d be interested to see the statistics of how many people are claiming some sort of reduced unemployment or disability benefit, I don’t think the unemployment statistics would be quite so much to trumpet when such facts were laid bare.
For my two days, I worked 9 hours without a break, (hospitality a delightful industry) for $16.00 an hour, which I knew was less than the ‘award’. While legally I know I am entitled to a break after 5 hours, I don’t think the boss cared to know as much, and none of the young people I worked with, who too worked all day without even 15 mins off, (stuffing in a sambo between customers) seemed to have any idea just how exploited they were being made. It certainly didn’t help the boss jokingly referring to himself as ‘master’ and the rest of us as slaves, It was so very apt and I was truly agog, and came close to simply walking out, (one of the few benefits of being a casual I am required to give 15 mins notice, but why should I stick to legal requirements?) but instead I bit my liip, remained stoic to observe the whole diabolical shenanigans.
Employers in many small businesses seem to be operating under the errouneous belief, that they have complete immunity to pay whatever they like and dictate conditions to suit them alone. The obvious alternative to suffering this abysmal treatment, is to tell them to stick it, (and go on the dole, or find some other fuckwit to work for). There are many many many out there, offering a pittance to become their ’slave’.
The government talked about a few rotten eggs in the basket who would exploit the situation in relation to them scrapping employment awards for AWAs. There are certainly more than a few, indeed its more like the overwhelming majority. Everybody, without fail, wants more bang for their buck and for small business operators this means treating staff with contempt and paying them as little as possible. We have backtracked to a Dickensian age.
It should also be more widely known that you can still sue your small minded boss for unfair dismissal and I read somewhere that the courts so far are tending towards the ‘rights’ or ‘justice’ of those who have been unfairly dismissed.
I am almost apoplexic with rage, at the greedy, money-grubbing, I’m alright jack, society this government has spawned especially among small business owners.
ps that’s $50 a fortnight better off!
Perhaps I’m really more incoherant with rage. Apoplectic? or Apolexic?
Link, the ‘overwhelming majority’ will soon become the ‘complete majority’; indeed anyone who wants to be successful in business will seek to reduce costs and WCs points the way.
In business, you have to operate ‘legally’ not necessarily ‘morally’. You have to seek the comparative advantage. If the competitor ‘down the road’ is cutting costs, then you will likely do the same. The real problem is that the business operator who doesn’t ’screw’ his/her employees will lose out to those who do. The ‘moral’ employer will learn quickly that ‘desperate’ measures are necessary.
The rules have changed under WCs. ‘Basic’ conditions have been reduced to five.
The floor is rotting for the employed while profits soar for the employer; and it is all legal and in many cases absolutely vital for business survival.
Sorry wpd, I don’t buy your ‘race to the bottom’ business model. Mistreating staff isn’t
it’s a recipe for mediocrity. Any good business person realises the value of quality staff and the impact they can have on the business’ success.
“Here’s why it’s called Workchoices [link]”
What, observa [sic], you mean prior to the passage to this great legislation workers couldn’t give notice and leave their employment? You’ve got to be joking.
“I have never dealt with an award which pays that much”:
Steve [at the pub (sic)], you’ve got to get out more. I work in the higher ed sector. There’s an award that sets rates of pay for everyone from casual tutor to professor. I’m sure professors are entitled to more than $20 per hour under the award.
It’s just that no professor relies on the higher ed award in that just about every higher ed institution would have an enterprise agreement that pays its professors more than the award or else individual professors are on above award conditions by virtue of their employment contracts
Dave from Albury would you care to provide a definition of
Is it a matter of ‘law’ or simply a matter of ‘perception’ as Paul Kelly is keen to argue?
Anthony, it is you who should get out more.
The post is about casual workers at Darrel Lea.
It is nice that you mention a higher ed award dealing with professors & tutors, very nice.
However I am yet to employ professors, or rather, yet to employ them as professors.
I would hazard a guess that workers at Darrell Lea have more in common with workers in my indusry, and my previous industry, than would professors & suchlike.
Certainly their pay scales would be more akin to each other than to that of professors.
$20 per hour for selling chocolate, eh ?
i know people with four year degrees working as crisis domestic violence counsellors under the SACS (level 4) award, at around $23 casual an hour.
Hmm, lets see, shop assistant who helps customer decide which easter eggs to buy vs counsellor who facilitates evacuation of woman from Palm Island after having her jaw broken?
Cliff, the TFT should be set at the single person’s poverty line at least (according to CIS figures from a few years ago, this is about 12,000 per year. It may be higher now).
I’m willing to bet that the government’s tax take would increase if the TFT were doubled – our low threshold encourages tax avoidance, hurts the poor and leads to situations like link’s ‘extra 50 bucks a fortnight – what’s the point’ above. It also keeps the poorest people unemployed, and contributes to Australia’s shockingly low workforce participation rates for the disabled – all because as soon as they start working, they pay ridiculously high effective marginal tax rates.
No amount of cheesy ’support the system that supports you’ Centrelink ads will stop people defrauding such an inequitable system.
Well clearly these people were earning far too much and deserve to have their wages cut.
I mean, I get your point that counsellors aren’t paid enough, but surely it’s possible to understand that someone’s getting a poor deal even if someone else isn’t getting what they deserve?
These people are selling chocolates for a living. It’s hardly the most fulfilling thing to do with one’s time. The least they deserve is a decent income.
Anna Winter, you are a snob.
You consider your profession has more gentility and nobility than “selling chocolates”? You will find that chocolate sellers are prouder people than you.
That wage rate sheet shows another aspect of workchoices which hasn’t yet got a mention in this thread.
A pay increase for permenant employees.
What the?
I’ve done that job. I don’t think that it’s so rewarding that people should be paid peanuts for it. I don’t think that many people work in a shop because it’s their calling.
Does anyone think that selling chocolates is any more rewarding than any other retail job? They aren’t making them. They’re working a cash register.
The principle of eroding awards concerns me a lot; though , unfortunately the Darrel Lea example perhaps seems to show the award seems a tad too high in the first place, and may infact garner slightly more public support for the AWA’s instead of the opposite.
A look at the SACS award makes a sobering comparision.
All I can say it’s a good thing that Haigh’s is one’s Easter shopping venue of choice.
And back when Spotlight ratted out their employees along similar lines, I relocated my patronage to Lincraft.
Sooner or later, unfortunately, we are going to run out of shops.
We’ll have to get Kate to knit all our food for us…
You say that like its a bad thing
You don’t think the job is rewarding Anna?
There is nothing wrong with selling chocolates.
A job is only as lacking in rewards as you want to make it!
It is you who lacks, not the job.
Anyway, I thought Darrel Lea was a chocolate factory.
Does this refusal (by some) to deal with AWA workplaces extend to refusing to deal with government departments which have moved to AWA’s?
If so, I can forsee considerable reductions in Austudy & Newstart payments.
A salesman, like maybe in a, uh, haberdasher, or maybe like a, uh, um… a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, “Would you… what size do you wear, sir?” And then you answer me.
Steve at the Pub, do you pontificate at your own emplyees like this about the dignity of honest toil and so on, or are you just seizing a flimsy pretext to score cheap points off Anna? Retail is retail. It’s not exactly coal mining, but it is bloody hard graft.
… he said, thereby confirming the general suspicion that he hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about in any case. There’s a Darrel Lea shop in every reasonable-sized shopping centre and mall in the country. They make a particularly yummy Chocolate Log. I recommend it.
Um — I used to recommend it.
Maybe Steve should spend more time managing his staff and less time at the pub. (Or does he own the pub?)
sc, be thankful the lady with the broken jaw is not paying your domestic violence counsellors, but rather all those grossly exploited, easter egg, shop assistants are being forcibly taxed higher to pay them, or they’d probably be grossing less than said shop assistants. Both no doubt subsidise the lifestyle of the jawbreaker via their taxes, but that’s another nightmare story.
Link, you really need to stop blaming Howard and his cheer squads for what you believe are ‘utter crap’ unemployment statistics and take up your criticisms directly with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Having worked their myself, I’m supremely confident they would be all ears to rectify any technical problems you can unearth for them, with one of their important data series.
‘The “bossâ€? in fact will charge whatever he thinks he can get away with – that helps explain why the identical product is priced differently in different places. Try, for example, buying the same basket of groceries in Lane Cove or Double Bay on one hand, and in Campbelltown or Liverpool on the other. Retail pricing is all about what the market can/will bear, not about the costs of production and getting a fair/reasonable return on capital.’
Well now Mick, I did want to keep it fairly simple for the good folk here at LP, who as you know are a bit slow at grasping the complexity of these things, but since you raise it, recall I did say ‘The boss knows exactly what all workers collectively want to pay..’, which of course, as you point out is an average of some prices in the marketplace. Naturally extracting what the market will bear, allows him to earn more profits and at the same time pay the highest remuneration possible to his workers as a result. Of course he could choose a different strategy in the marketplace, a la China and we all know how that turns out for worker remuneration, now don’t we? Great for workers as consumers of those products of course, particularly if you happen to receive your wage from a profit maximising employer as you so rightly alluded to here.
Pavlov’s Cat: News Bulletin for you. Shopping centres aren’t the axle of the earth.
I can’t recall in which year I last set foot in one.
I have however, come accross Darrell Lea chocolates in lots of places.
There was a piece on ABC tv recently, about the Lea family dynamics and their chocolate factory. The current management came accross as proper bars tards, I was expecting that their AWA would offer $12 per hour.
Perhaps this site is not exactly over-represented with commenters who have a first hand or recent knowledge of toil.
OF COURSE we value and revere the dignity of honest toil at our workplace!
AND we stand up (quicksmart) anybody who dares to suggest their occupation is more socially acceptable, or carries more status than any other profession.
It is rather surprising (& a refreshing step into the lives of “the other half”) to see there are people who are so out of contact with honest toil that they consider a defence of it to be merely a position academically adopted in a debate.
God you’ve become a bore SATP. Why the fuck do you bother? Haven’t you got something better to do than constantly nit pick at your perceived enemies?
Shorter Obby: Arbeit macht frei (Work brings freedom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei
Nothing quite like taking away people’s freedom and calling it freedom, is there Obby?
Interesting to see the evolution of the real “troglodytes” and those “a bit slow at grasping the complexity of these things” who lived in the 19th century where the common law of contract meant accepting the risks of employment injury without compensation.
Now of course, their descendants have arranged for certain types of work contracts to be verboten with severe penalties, and this is guaranteed to bring us into John Howard’s great workers paradise no less!
Well there is a label that can be attached to it: they brought it in under the Corporations powers so it’s appropriate to call it corporate facism
Everyone:
When is the penny going to drop that WorkChoices is not overdue reform but tomfoolery instead; that it is having a more lasting destructive effect on productivity and profitability than ever did a series of wildcat strikes back in the heyday of union power; that it is turning Australia’s best-and-brightest into ex-pats?
We live in a highly competitive, absolutely merciless world. A world that doesn’t give a damn about how elegant and ideologically-perfect our latest industrial relations fad may look.
Has anyone considered subcontracting out industrial relations policy making instead to Harry Potter?
I’m one of these counsellor types SG is talking about, though full-time. A degree is essential, and I get paid $19.64 per hour.
Well, I have a couple of degrees, and considerable experience in my work field, and have never made as much as the award quoted in the post states, (excluding a few short term contracts, or when working in non – professional jobs (for which my qualifications and experience were not a prerequisite)).
Do I think that the Darrel Lea workers are being paid too much – No !
Have I been underpaid – Yes !
I believe that some of the reasons for this are that :
(1) professional skills are chronically undervalued (with a few exceptions) in our society
(2) union coverage for many professionals is non existent (at least historically),
(3) there are usually only “low densities” of professionals in any workplace, which makes any sort of industrial action futile, in the event negotiations with an employer break down
On the other hand, I have found, that in general, Australian employers will take every opportunity they can to “bastardise” their employees whether it be with respect to their wages, conditions of employment and whatever else they can manage.
AWAs and “Workchoices” seem only to compound this problem, through placing even more power in the hands of “mongrel” employers, which will be inevitably abused, by, (in my experience) the vast majority.
This fact is, of course clearly demonstrated by the AWA which forms the basis of this posting.
Sorry to blow your stereotypes out of the water here, Steve, but personally I’m a self-employed one-woman small business who grew up in the middle of nowhere and has (among other jobs) toiled honestly if not with much dignity in her time as a dishwasher, farm help, cleaner, builder’s labourer and, recently, retail flunky.
So yes I know about overheads, bosses from hell, hard graft, not getting paid according to your qualifications, and the absence of shopping centres. Don’t be a simple-minded self-righteous prat.
Oh dear it’s Peter Kemp with time out from painting ‘Free Hicks’ posters, to lecture us all about similar Orwellian slogans from the Doctrine of Peace’s dark past.
Still living in the 19th century, where of course the hard yards of the economic miracle of the free market all began and allowed us to gradually afford the modern luxuries of Workcover, Centrelink Benefits and Pensions, not to mention the productivity that pays some of the best wages in the world. We get a thrill at watching it happen all over again in places like China, but a sad empty feeling when it doesn’t in places like Zimbabwe and NK, where the usual suspects are busy sloganeering as usual. Yes, those idyllic places where the workers are all free to belong to one big union/party and they get to award themselves wage rises they hope will free themselves from their starvation. That’s because they have the fuzzy logic of Peter and are beguiled by ‘at the same time therefore because of’ simplistic attachment to unions. A bit like thinking there’s causality between AIDS and global warming I suppose.
It’s really the same nostalgia for the protected banking system of my youth. In those days of fixed exchange rates you had to have the old school tie on to borrow from the bank manager at cheap rates. Most had to top up with second mortgages at banks and building societies and forget it if you were a woman or out of favour minority. Now with market rates and true competition, your genes and hormones don’t matter, as long as you can pay the going market rate. Right girls? It’s similar with wages as we move to cashing out all the enforced compartmentalisation of wage rates (penalty rates, LSL, maternity leave, etc)into a broad, simpler hourly wage rate, with mutual free rights to terminate. Some will always hanker for the ‘good old days’ of compartmentalisation, restrictive practices and price collusion of course, but definitely not the large numbers excluded under that system. Besides, collectively we’ve never had it so good.
Actually independent trade unions are a feature of liberal democracy. They tend to do badly under authoritarian regimes of all stripes. Might I remind you of the nature of the organisation that brought down the Communist regime in Poland?
So let me get this straight: collective bargaining bad; collectively measuring how well off you are good?
“But Mr Bank Manager, why won’t you lend me that money? Don’t you know the average wage has never been higher?”
Re: Comments by Anna Winter and Pavlov’s Cat on work
The pay slip is perhaps mostly, but not wholly, the key to whatever gratifications are allowed to all workers: such as self-respect, status, the regard of others.
Asked if he liked his job, one of John Updike’s characters replied, “Hell, it wouldn’t be a job if I liked it.” There is nothing inherently interesting about most of the sub-divided tasks many workers are obliged to perform and most of us have paid jobs that are too small for our spirit.
Sure, everyone is entitled to decent wages and conditions and WorkChoices is about limiting that and will hurt the lowest paid the most.
But even in mundane, low-paid jobs, people often search for, and find, a form of life, rather than a form of dying, an enlarging rather than a shrinking of the spirit.
Studs Terkel interviewed one Dolores Dante who described the trials of a restaurant waitress. She was proud of her skills, loved her job and refused to feel demeaned. “When I put down the plate, you don’t hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, ‘How come you’re just a waitress?’ I say, ‘Don’t you think you deserve being served by me?’”
There is dignity in all work, or they can be. Doris Lessing worked as a telephone operator and secretary as a young woman before becoming a full-time writer. She wrote that she “understood absolutely why women, asked why they put up with boring and repetitive work, go on with it, saying, ‘but it allows me to think my own thoughts.’”
Most low-paid workers, I believe, because I’ve seen it again and again as a co-worker, still retain a degree of dignity and initiative that employers routinely find alarming. And it is one of the greatest tributes to human dignity that so many of these workers obstinately refuse to meet the specification of Frederick Winslow Taylor “That he (sic) should be so stupid and phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox, than any other type”.
Great comment, Bridie, but I will point out again that nowhere did I say that retail work lacked dignity, was beneath me, or anything of the sort.
I merely pointed out that, for most people, casual retail work is done for the wages. I know this because for many years I worked in retail and I did it for the wages. I found ways of enjoying myself, I usually did the best work I could, and I never for a second felt less worthy than people in other professions.
However, unlike the job I have now, had I won a million dollars playing Lotto I would not have continued working in retail. Nor would most people. So pointing out that most people do work like that mostly for the money is not rude or patronising. It’s just the truth, and it is the reason I am outraged at this particular “individual agreement� being offered to the staff at Darrell Lea.
In my experience, people like steve at the pub try to use the language of dignity and respect as the spoonful of sugar offered to their staff as a way of justifying shithouse pay. Anyone who genuinely cares about the dignity of workers would understand that it’s terribly difficult to live a life of dignity when you can’t pay the bills.
What Anna said in that last paragraph. I’m a bit surprised that it needed to be spelled out.
We are all very naughty and getting away from the point.
The Darrell Lea AWA. A common assumption on employment is that streamlined pay rates simply mean less pay for employees.
Not necessarily so.
A weekend pay rate competitive with that of weekdays gives employees the flexibility to perform the work on a weekend.
(refer to the wage sheet above) Where the award may have priced casuals out of the market for some tasks, the AWA allows employees the flexibility to be employed as casual and to only work a few hours.
And for the permenant employees, from that wage sheet the AWA contains a pay rise……….
It is not clear from the information above which form of AWA Darrell Lea are using. It is quite possibly a collective AWA, in which case the majority of existing employees voted in favour of it, and this entire thread is redundant.
However if it is a series of individual AWA’s, the union can still negotiate and provide advice to the employees. Is this happening?
“So pointing out that most people do work like that mostly for the money is not rude or patronising.”
It’s just that retail workers do it mostly for the money, whereas loftier people like counsellors who supervise the evacuation of broken jawed women from Palm Island clearly don’t, which is of course, why they’re always whinging to their girlfriends about how they don’t get paid their true worth?
Which brings me to Observa’s first axiom of business- If you don’t pay people to work they don’t show up and even when you do sometimes they still don’t show.
Of course this is only anecdotal years of experience and we shouldn’t all rush to generalisations.
I have a dark secret to confess here. If my customers don’t pay me I don’t show up either, or not for very long.
Wow, observa, that’s really clever how you just agreed with me and still managed to make it sound like you weren’t.
“axle of the earth”?
Didn’t know it had wheels.
Exactly Anna, is the AWA a collective or individual?
From the simple statement that it is “offered to all new employees” I cannot tell which it is.
There are some differences in the administration of these two types of AWA.
Steve, it’s an AWA.
Anna, AWA’s (under workchoices) ain’t just AWA’s. They come in various types.
Anna, if you surf around that site you link to, you will see there are 6 (SIX) types of AWA.
I think by now it is safe to assume that nobody has the faintest clue which type the Darrel Lea AWA is.
skepticlawyer
I don’t share your enthusiasm for higher non-tax thresholds. I think tax should kick from the first dollar for two reasons:
1. All people who earn income should pay tax to feel an attachment to the body politic;
2. The more tinkering done, the more incentive there is to avoid tax, and the more disincentive there is to work once income reaches that tax-free threshold.
You may be calling them all AWAs, but the site I linked to does not. They all have quite different names, AWAs being quite specifically a term for individual contracts.
Australian workplace agreement
Employee collective agreement
Union collective agreement
Employer greenfields agreement
Union greenfields agreement
Multiple business agreement
Update: Another reason to celebrate
The man of this moment our moment has a been there for so long that maybe his time is like a old boat with a leak and about to sink with(your in front of me) the AWA Arrr”’……… now thats of my chest.
It would be interesting to note just what illegal activity had been going on before among HMAA members.
The realities of workchoices (as opposed to zealotic political groupthink) are that an AWA simply allows the legalising of common sense which previously had been illegal.
In many workplaces whole rafts of award conditions have been ignored by mutual consent (or by vehement employee insistence) for years. This activity is/was illegal, and it is only the employer who is called to account by the law.
Example: Many retail employees, especially those working a quiet shift, are just as happy to sit at the counter on full pay & eat their lunch, rather than clock off & eat out the back. (As they are supposed to under the award)
This has pure upside for the employee (gets paid to eat lunch) and pure downside for the employer (breaking the law)
This is one of MANY award conditions which are commonly ignored by employees. Under an AWA the employer is no longer breaking the law.
Good. This is what workchoices is supposed to achieve.
Anna, we are starting to get into semantics. However, on that site you link to, the six types of (A)WA are listed under the heading of “Workplace Agreements”.
OEA staff particularly will, when discussing an “AWA” ask “which type of agreement” it is.
I have attended seminars where OEA staff use AWA to refer to all types of workplace agreements.
Probably this is because WA is an acronym which has already been taken, and “an/the AWA” rolls of the tongue somewhat easier than “a/the WA”.
“It is quite possibly a collective AWA, in which case the majority of existing employees voted in favour of it, and this entire thread is redundant”
“AWA’s (under workchoices) ain’t just AWA’s. They come in various types…you will see there are 6 (SIX) types of AWA”
A collective AWA? Six types? What the…? The whole point of AWAs is they’re meant to be a form of statutory individual bargain. You’ve missed the boat here stevie, but pinpointed the inherent bad faith in the Coalition government’s position. An AWA is an individual agreement. Employees as a group don’t get to give a majority vote yea or nae.
In reality, of course, employers don’t individualise their AWAs. Many employers can’t be bothered negotiating genuinely individual agreements with each and every employee – too much like hard work or, as economists like to call it, too high ‘transaction costs’. Instead they offer a template AWA – you used to be able to get these from the Office of the Employment Advocate, and probably still can. Darrell Lea’s statements seem to indicate this is what is going on.
In short, AWAs are standardised packages, individually wrapped.
And then the government turns around and says it wants to outlaw ‘pattern bargaining’. For workers and their unions, you understand, not for employers.
The ? for me is who licks the stamp of free thought that I don’t see here , its just follow the line of your popular political group . O for some free thought.
Anthony, I have not missed any boat.
Neither am I talking in the abstract.
I have currently negotiated in excess of 40 AWA’s and more on the way.
I can promise, it is you who has to rethink your third paragraph.
One thing which may be influencing Darrell Lea’s thinking is that it costs approximately $1,000 to write, negotiate and register the simplest of AWA’s. (And this is producing it from a template).
This cost is vastly reduced for a subsequent AWA, provided there is absolutely no change to it.
However if there are any changes, then it more or less becomes a brand new agreement, and the cost & time frame reverts to square one.
Steve, are you seriously suggesting AWAs are a form of collective regulation of employment terms and conditions that are collectively voted on by employees? I stand by the third paragraph: AWAs are meant to be an individual workplace bargain. In this they contrast to union and non-union collective agreements and this wonderful innovation of WorkChoices, the greenfields ‘Agreement’ (whereby the employer agrees with, er, him or herself, as to the terms and conditions of employment)
The sweet taste of chocolate to many is more important than the welfare of those that produce it or sell it
Funny that you haven’t mentioned prohibited content SATP because this is where the real bite of Workchoices is and this is where Howard’s Ideological obsessions are really written into Workchoices isn’t it? But thanks for the pointer in that direction. Anna despite the RWDB facade of SATP this stuff is getting to the nitty gritty of what will be the undoing of Howard once it is understood and explained simply.
Anthony,
I am speaking from experience. Not from reading a newspaper article or listening to a street corner speaker.
I assure you, some workplace agreements are decided by a group meeting of the employees, and the matter is decided by majority vote.
If you, for some reason, disbelieve me, go ahead. There is no need for me to state a straightforward fact more than once.
As that is what it is, fact.
It is also the law. End of story.
Even more dangerous and scary is that it is law backed up by a High Court decision.
No it’s not.
Here are the types of collective agreement from the definitions section of the Act:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/wra1996220/s4.html#australian_workplace_agreement
An AWA is an individual workplace agreement.
This is the Act:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/wra1996220/
The fact that you don’t understand the law doesn’t give me much hope about the soundness of your opinion on all this!
Thanks for those links Mark, I will sit down and read all this stuff over the weekend. SATP had me believing that his understanding of the law was from hard experience but in the end there is no substitute for getting my head around issues by and for myself. I was actually surprised to be in agreement with SATP for the first time in my life.
Well it doesn’t take long to see that an AWA is an individual WRITTEN agreeement in this document. Can’t see anything about a show of hands, collective voting,or anything of that nature here.
Back in your box Mark.
I don’t have an opinion, I am simply dealing with legislation as it stands.
Politics and opinions (as such) on workchoices are largely restricted to people for whom it is an abstract concept, rather than something which is intruding into their lives.
You are getting into a terminology discussion. In all the wrangling with workchoices, I have never heard any of the forms of workplace agreement referred to, by anybody, as anything but “AWA”.
I am happy to call them anything which will please commenters. “Goodbye John Agreement” is fine with me (GJA – doesn’t roll off the tongue well enough, perhaps GHA instead?)
I am willing to share my experience with commenters. It is their choice if they wish to not believe my experiences, which like all experiences, are vastly different to what I thought they would be when attending seminars.
As for reading government publications & departmental advice about how my experience will be…. Hahahahahhahahahahahahaha…. (For example, Did anybody here have the misfortune to attend an ATO run GST-workshop? Hahahahahadoubled)
Steve: There is nothing “funny” about my not mentioning prohibited content. In the discussions of GHA’s we have not got anywhere near that stage. We are still bogged down over what is a GHA (known elsewhere as an AWA). Rather like the real life experience.
Besides, in dealing with a GHA, prohibited content is not an issue. It is prohibted, & never makes it anywhere near the process. The process is difficult enough, no need to go out finding more stuff to complicate things.
Prohibited content is something I have never heard of except as a brief point mentioned in seminars during a speedy “walk-through” of the legislation.
The negative political impact on the federal government, resulting from having implemented workchoices, is beyond dispute everywhere except at a Liberal Party press conference.
There are many aspects of the legislation for which I cannot understand the rationale. There are many aspects to the legislation for which I do not understand the ideology, (curiously, my staff pointed out what were to them perfectly sensible reasons – in their ideology – for banning of collective bargaining, this came at the end of one of the more surreal boss-worker arguments I have ever been party to, being as I have never understood why collective bargaining is banned)
SATP, your argument with Anthony is clearly lost.
Steve, there is no argument with Anthony. I have no interest in his guesswork about how GHA’s operate. I know how they work.
From the way he write, it is possible that his contact with workchoices is not much closer than reading about it.
Get over it and move on. Anthony wins, you lost.
Drop the personality snarking Steve. It can’t change legislation. I stated a fact, Anthony chooses not to believe. Fine. End of story.
If he goes to write a GHA, he will discover what I said is fair dinkum.
It is quite a mind bender, trying to decide between a collective agreement, or individual agreements. It is not easy, and advice is very mixed. Akin to being blindfolded just before coming to a fork in the road.
Advice from those who have tried each type of agreement tends to differ markedly from the advice given by those who have only observed from the sidelines.
Perhaps you could write a piece Steve, on the relative merits of each. Which would you choose to write and implement if you were stuck with workchoices? Collective or Individual?
From the style of comments above I would hazard a guess that until it was mentioned here tonight, very few commenters here had any idea that collective workplace agreements are a part of workchoices. It is not an aspect which gets much publicity, and to the less zealotic and more reasoned of those here, it should be a clue that there could be more to workchoices than they have been told by certain vested interests.
Get yer hand off it SATP. As someone who runs some poufy fern bar, what the fuck would you know about hard-nosed wheeling and dealing? Beyond of course throwing a tanty over the catered sushi arriving five minutes late.
“I have never heard any of the forms of workplace agreement referred to, by anybody, as anything but “AWAâ€?.”
Try ‘enterprise agreement’, ‘collective agreement’. ‘greenfields agreement’, ‘EBA’. “non-union agreement” for starters – all names I’ve heard floating around my workplace, used by workers and managers alike. And all quite distinct from what anyone understood as an AWA.
…
Laugh all you like but it is these documents that consitute workchoices, SATP and not mutant versions endorsed by bosses and their offsiders or cheersquads.