the desire to increase the share of GDP going to profit rather than labour

Newsflash Komrades. This is twenty first century Australia NOT Victorian Manchester.

Do try to keep up.

I feel sorry for you TimT, you must really hate your job.

As Derrida Derider said

labour markets are not characterised by bilaterally perfect competition with costless symmetric information.

and as Ken said [quoted by Mark]

The idea that people make decisions about their jobs based solely on maximising the price they can get for their labour is self-evidently ridiculous to anyone who is capable of observing RealityWorld objectively instead of through an ideological prism.

Like it or not …. the take-it-or-leave-it and the-nose-to-the-grindstone attitudes do exist out in the world of work; they are increasingly popular and rewarded substitutes for effective management …. sooner or later we will all pay the heavy price for allowing such stupid backward attitudes to flourish. Think for a moment - why did all those great sugar-cane plantations with their crowds of blackbirded labour in Queensland collapse within a decade of coming up against individual farmers and against farm workers on paid wages? L-O-L

But, per Ignatius Reilly, let me say “peace to all men [and women] of goodwill!”

Seems a pretty simple proposition to me. I was just taking Ken at his word.

Imagine walking into your workplace, and asking everyone there to shift to contracts where they do the same work, with overtime, weekend work, etc - for no money.

Good luck with that!

This is another key failing of Serfchoices; its pissed off the large group of workers who weren’t union members, but happily freeloaded off the union to negotiate and set their wage rises and conditions etc (hence the bargaining fee idea, which outrages many, though I have no idea why. When else do you get something for nothing?).

This group aint pro-union, but have just lately realised they arent anti-union either. They’re worried by the legislations impact on unions, and hence their own jobs.

When discussing declining union membership, its worth bearing in mond this group. It wouldnt surprise me if they were 25% of the workforce, juding by the palces Ive worked in.

I suspect well over 60% of the workforce relies on union negotiated EBAs and awards. Its just that only 30% actually pay for it to happen.

Ingrates! Join up!

the desire to increase the share of GDP going to profit rather than labour

This changed with the introduction of compulsory super. Superannuation providers are under the gun to pay out super to baby-boomers, hence the increased and increasing desire to maximise capital returns. True, this desire can manifest itself in sacking some of the very workers who stand to benefit from super payouts, but it is a complicating factor that could not have been considered by Marx, Keynes or Friedman.

to be denied any agency when they enter the workplace

In a period of very low unemployment, particularly for skilled labour, people have no agency in the workplace?

The only real protection is productivity and profit

I’ve seen productive workers ground down and profitable enterprises swallowed up, digested and shat out by sloppy, greedy managers. The first part of your final sentence R is the only one that makes sense.

I suspect employees get the protection of a fixed rate of pay ‘even in times of economic downturn’ because, unlike the small business owner or independent contractor, they also get the burden of a fixed rate of pay even in times of economic upturn.

The small business owner has a motivation that employees don’t have. When employees leave work they leave behind wider concerns about the business. Any manager who pays people $10/hour while at the same time insisting that they behave as though they bear personal responsibility for the business’ very survival - if employees are valued that highly they should be paid accordingly and share in rights/responsibilities of ownership, and if they shirk that for the bird-in-the-hand of employment then the manager must downgrade expectations accordingly.

The union movement has always been able to manage and siddeline maddies like Mighell. Just when the Libs have managed to puff him up to be the boogedy man (unlikely given the swift resignation, but possible), watch some shellbacked reactionary like Hugh Morgan to step up and assert the biblical notion of serfdom or some such. The govt can’t take a trick.

adrian of reality (30 May at 03:28 PM)
Yawn… Another day, another anti-Labor beat up.

Don’t know when you lot at the Government Gazette will realise that you’re becoming becoming a laughing stock.
And Matt, while I appreciate your world weary sarcasm personna, it would be refreshing just for a change for you to deal with issues of substance. You know the ones that effect the lives of most Australians.

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mattprice/index.php/theaustralian/comments/labor_beats_retreat_on_taped_tirade/desc/P40/

Whose economy are you talking about? The economy of the the union members whose wages will be higher will improve. That’s typical of the obfuscation of the right. Shifting wealth from wages to profit share is “microeconomic reform” that is “good for the economy”. Shifting it in the other direction is “union thuggery”

Funny how the ALP hold out Ms Rein as an example of a successful Aussie business blah blah blah…

And there was I thinking that most of this info came out when the Liberals attacked Rein, and she had the unmitigated gall to defend herself.

Ah Razor, not the sharpest tool in the shed. Good for a laugh though.

If the ALP win, we can look forward to more behaviour of the type boasted about by Dean Mighell, and won’t that be good for the economy! Yippee!!

Funny how the ALP hold out Ms Rein as an example of a successful Aussie business, yet it is achieved on the back of many of the reforms of the Howard Government - the rise of individual contracts, private providers of job placement services, tax reductions . . . I could go on but I’ve a business to run.

It always boils down to one thing - the left, environmentalists and social activists are almost always screaming hypocrits.

“Farmers don’t get these same protections spoken of and many of them are living on net incomes of less than 75k (my sister for one). Small businesses get thrown out of their premises if they can’t pay the rent, no protection there.”

Haven’t you ever read the franchise code of conduct from the TPA: small business gets protection against unreasonable termination, conciliation and arbitration of disputes by an independent 3rd party, the right to collectively bargain. And heard about the chicken meat growers who got authorisation from the ACCC to collectively bargain because of their weak market position?

I suspect employees get the protection of a fixed rate of pay ‘even in times of economic downturn’ because, unlike the small business owner or independent contractor, they also get the burden of a fixed rate of pay even in times of economic upturn. The idea of enforcing employment contracts where the rate of pay tracks the market value of workers’ output seems crazy. If the employer has best access to the necessary information then it is in the position to deceive workers about the true value of their output: why would employees trust the employer when the incentive to cheat is so strong?

Everyone:
Sorry, I did omit to say that where workers are treated fairly and decently, they often do put extra effort and commitment onto THEIR work, traditional grumbling about the boss and calling him/her rude names notwithstanding [it might even be one of the customary perks of the job :D]