Work hard lads

[happy daze john in oz]

I wonder if the site in question in Melb is shut down because of the weekend and as nearly everyone gets one RDO a month and it falls on that Mon why the hell would they picket a site that is closed or are the scabs working it over the weekend on flat pay.[/QUOTE]

Yes Les it may well be their RDO but it sounded so funny at the time the way the union man spoke about it.
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.

[Tony Morcom]

RDO RDO ORD OR RD OR

[Les Woodard]

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.

[happy daze john in oz]

Some companies run a 19 day month or a a 9 day fortnight. The worst offenders are university lecturers, they will give the students an assignment to do then phone in to say they are working from home. That is they are doing a job somwhere else. But it gets worse. All general uni staff must submit an annual leave form, in most uni's the staff take their annual leave at Christmas/New Year as the uni has no students until early march. All general staff get their leave loading at this time of year whether they take leave then or not.
Tony let me explain leave loading. Way back in the dark old days just after WW2 there was plenty of work and an excess of overtime for those who wanted it. The unions claimed that any one on leave would not earn overtime and would be disadvantaged. So after much wrangling with employers it was agreed that all workers would recieve an additional 17.5% added to their annual leave pay. No other country in the world pays it's employees more to go on leave than to work. Some industries have now encompassed that within the hourly rate, but the building trades, universities, public servants and I belive the education department still pay.
Back to the uni, lecturers were not required to put in leave forms or produce medical certificates if off sick. We had one guy who left our uni to go to another. He was paid 10 years anual leave payments even though he had been on leave at Christmas like the rest of us, long service leave and 15 days per year sick leave unused. This is where the system is so wrong and why many get upset about it. Tony, long service leave came in just after the war to encourage people to stay with an employer. Now after ten or fifteen years depending on the award you are under you will get up to 13 weeks additonal paid leave in one hit.
Award, a predetermined rate of pay and conditions for different industries, there are currently about 300 different ones.
But the best bit, our Feral government minister for industrial relations said on Friday,
'I know how tough it is for the workers, I am on $300,000 a year and find it hard to make ends meet'. Poor bugger!

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi shipmates, Hi les woodard, Just a small point high wages dont stop any company competing in the global market place if the product is good ? you cant buy quality in anything for a knock down price, Just buy Chinese/ Indian goods to find out i.e tools for example Look good but after a couple of times fit for the bin, they are many things made in china the same, Aussie should be like the western world and only make quality goods, All the cheap companys with shoddy goods should be in cheap wage countrys as they are today, Every Aussie and western world worker should be on top money, not min wage for a max 38 hr week with all extra days days off and family days off ,This would make in the long term for a happier workforce, with much less illness and better productive. Remember the wealth is created from the bottom up NOT from the top down. dont listern to the media spin Big business does not make any worker rich only themselfs/ shareholders.{ Top money for all workers and top working condition} No low pay or long hours in any of the western world countries.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi All.
I agree with Roger, Gina Rhinart would like to see workers back down on the bread line. When she made that statement Bob Kater, a polititian I have not a lot of time for said what she didn't say was that most of her 40 billions came from her father Lang Hancock, who not only had some of the worlds biggest iron ore mines only paying a pittance to the State Govt for the use of.but also some of the biggest Asbestos mines, the small town of Witanoon in West Aus was wiped out by asbestosis, even then it was known to be deadly, Lang Hancock never cleaned it up, kids were playing in the dust in the streets. There again we are back to "Give them bread and circuses" Roll on the next Olympics, 16 Billion to be spent, or is it made there.
Cheers Des

[Les Woodard]

What gets up my goat is so many are now retired and set up in retirement and living comfortably and then go on site to condem workers and unions for what conditions they have left yet forget that if it was not for workers going on stike and unions negotiatlng a decent wage that they would not have the lifestyle that they have today. That is why I will defend them all the time simply because I llike what I have and know it was not given to me on a plate like some. I agree that unions have lost sight of where they should be but that is because like politicians it is the people who vote in both union leaders and politicians and after years of right wing white anting we have the results so if you do not like it then look in the mirror to find out who is to blame. I have the satisfaction that I fought a good honest fight while a member of any union even when I could see the back stabbers working their way up the ladder. I have no delusions that they where pleased to hear that I had retired. To sum up on it all. When I retired the workforce then was one of the most gutless ones I was involved with not a bit like the workforce I started out in. Mind you there are still a couple of unions with a bit of intensitanal fortitude still.

[happy daze john in oz]

Hi All.
I agree with Roger, Gina Rhinart would like to see workers back down on the bread line...........

Sorry Des but I do not agree, she does not want them on the bread line, look how mnay she employs now? But there are a lot out there who think they have a right to all without working for it. But the fact remians that if you do put in you will be rewarded, and as Les points out the unions now have lost their way. Most union leaders are attempting to gain office in parliament at some level, the trough is far better there, and they will sell the workers to get there.
I see she is to begin on anew mine that will employ 8500 workers just to get it up and running. It will be a long way from the nearest city or town and the wages that will be earned there will blow you away.

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi Shipmates, A mate of mine 17yr old was a ten pound P.O.M. and had a job in one of the mines in Aussie some where in the out-back, The money was good and they all lived in shared accomadation they idea of a good time was putting snakes in your bed, The conditions would have suited a war camp no woman no beer ? not my way of life as a single man I was lucky I went to sea, The wages that they pay is because no one who wanted a normal life would work under ground on shifts , with no social life for months ,unless they needed the money { Debt} or familys to look after were on the run from something in them days. To day with mine owners Like Gina Rhinart they would have to pay me a lot more to get me to work in one of her Asbestos mine ??? A few extra aussie dollars is not enough money, to die in a slow and very painful way!!! she is not doing any one any favours with her jobs only herself. Maybe the unions should sue the mine owner for lost of life?

[happy daze john in oz]

, Aussie should be like the western world and only make quality goods, All the cheap companys with shoddy goods should be in cheap wage countrys as they are today, Every Aussie and western world worker should be on top money, not min wage for a max 38 hr week with all extra days days off and family days off ,This would make in the long term for a happier workforce, with much less illness and better productive. Remember the wealth is created from the bottom up NOT from the top down. dont listern to the media spin Big business does not make any worker rich only themselfs/ shareholders.{ Top money for all workers and top working condition} No low pay or long hours in any of the western world countries.[/QUOTE]

I agree with your sentiment on this one, but there is a slight problem. The average guy now is looking for the cheapest most times not the best. This is happeneing all around the globe, most things made now are throw away rather than fix if broken. It now costs more to have a TV repaired than to buy a new one. We have a number of companies here that competed in the market with quality goods, most are now either out of business or going that way. Our motor industry can no longer cope with superior imported models very often cheaper than we can produce. While it would be good to have the scenario you suggest with high pay and short hours, we have to compete in a global village where countries such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia are producing the goods so much cheaper.
Whet the unions could be doing is trying to find a way for these countries to bring their standards up to those of the west, then we may have equality.