I agree many of the benifits have been won by past union members but the problem we face here now in Oz is that our wages are amongst the highest in the world with the hiughest on costs and so many companies can no longer compete in the current global situation. Where it will all end is anyones guess but we can no longer afford to pay more than we earn as a nation. I would like to see all companies doing well and full employment but at the moment cannot see how that can occur.
That might be true for some but most blue collar workers that are not involved with mining have entered to realms of working poor if you delve into wages paid. When they take the average wage they include everyone in that so the poor bugger trying to survive on $500 per week is lumped in with the person earning $5000 per week and deemed to be getting an avarge of $2750 per week and then you say he should take a cut because of it.
RDO Tony Rostered Day Off. When we went to a 38 hour week it was deemed that every fourth week we would get a day of work. Some companies you have the day of without pay and with others it is with pay but is reflected in the hourly rate to compensate that day. It does get a bit more confusing in the aspect that with some you can accrue the RDO's and end up with 13 more days of at the end of the year so a person on four weeks annual leave can end up with a coupld of public holidays thrown in with seven weeks holiday. Now take in the affect that most shift workers are entitiled to an extra weeks holiday because of shift work as well as accruing extra days because of being rostered of on public holiday without pay can snag another weeks leave which would end up giving you nine weeks leave but believe me to get that you will have really earned it. Not like the bloody teachers who get about 13 weeks leave a year plus all public holidays with pay and still only have a six hour working week and some of that is student free time as well as pupil free days and they are usually the ones that are bleeting about having poor pay and conditions having to survive on about $70k a year base. Told you the intial explanation was simple but gets complicated when looked further into it and hence I will be told that I got it wrong because there will be other award conditions with other RDO rules. When it came in I was all for an extra two weeks leave a year and staying on a 40 hour week.
That's the way the mop flops.
My thanks to Brian for this site.