We all know there will be a Federal election before the years end, there has to be, so it's no surprise that some candidates are already on the campaign trail reving up supporters and helpers and generally letting the general voters know they are around, in some cases at the expense of their day time job and people who depend on them.
Anyone who watches TV will have begun to see adds about Work Choices, adds by the unions and they intimate that if elected a conservative government will re-introduce the controversial legislation.
This is important, because the John Howard led conservative government was voted out for one main reason and that was Work Choices which was perceived by workers in general as putting their job security in jeopardy and handing more of the power balance to employers than ever before.
Further, it seemed that with unions not required to get enterprise bargaining agreements between employers and employees union membership was beginning to wane, . . . big time.
As far as I can see, Labor, and it's glib, smirking, gushing leader who won the election on a promise to get rid of Work Choices have really only made one significant change to it, and that is to allow workers to have union representation for and during ETA's if they want to.
Many believe that this was only a measure to keep what is an outdated and irrelevant (since they were required to be registered with the government and fulfill a lot of other restrictive regulations brought out by a previous Labor government who had a leader who cried more times than the current one has honoured promises) body alive to raise money for future Labor election campaigns.
And there you have it, we basically still have Work Choices with a few little alterations to appease the unions, and now in return we have the usual million dollar union scare campaign on our TV's and radio's telling us the sky will fall if we don't vote Labor.
Personally I'm sick of labor having all the advantage in elections, they have their own votes, the greens votes and the unions telling every worker how bad it's going to be under a conservative Government.
We really need to look at the wording of union adds carefully, because they don't actually say we have any benefit from voting Labor , they are just a scare campaign, and totally not in the spirit of democracy.
.
3 comments:
Funny you mention the crying man, wasn't he the one who got popular as a trade union leader and seamlessly ousted Bill Haydon to take the PM's job that a drovers dog could have won, and like Krudd was another grinning idiot who loved the media attention and meeting dignitaries from OS ?
Since unions were regulated i've dumped mine I don't pay anymore, and they constantly tell me that I have the pay and conditions I do because of the work of unions and that it is unfair to all the other employees I work with (my not paying) even though none of the others pay either and all used to years ago, and all are getting the same letters as me. Worse we haven't had a pay rise in quite a few years because when we all came off contract we were earning about one and a half times what would have been the award for our jobs.
Are the unions in the pocket of Labor? I think they are.
Are the unions worth having now? I don't think they are anymore.
I have only ever belonged to
a union once in my life, that
was when i was working for the
Logan City Council as a part
time caretaker, my experience
with them is that unions only
care about you is if there is
dozens and dozens of people in-
volved in one particular dispute
and they can get themselves on
TV. If you`re an individual, who
has just as big a legit gripe as
an individual amongst a class
action, unions in my opinion
couldn`t give a stuff about
you. And it`s been that way
since that ACTU leader come
prime minister and Keating
politicised the unions upon
their election in 1983. Its
fair to say before `83, unions
were mostly there for the good
of the working class and didn`t
discriminate against individuals
on the basis of their political
persuasuion, even if back then
they were bankrolling ALP elec-
tion campaigns like they still
are today. The union i was with
at the LCC, the AWU, couldn`t
have been more useless if they
tried for a very simple dispute
regarding award penalty rates
which should have been ironed
out very quickly. I paid my
fees for well over a year,
which should have amounted
to about $480 or there abouts.
Apparently, and maybe another
commenter can confirm this, if
someone joins a union and begins
paying union fees, but then stops
and chooses to go without union
representation, apparently if
years down the track if you
go to join the same union or
another union, and require
union representation, the
union will provide that but
they will make you pay for
the entire period that you
didn`t didn`t belong to any
union and didn`t pay your
union fees. To me, this is
nothing short of collusion
between the unions and it
completely goes against the
Trade Practises Act. Your
union fess are a transaction.
The Labor tactic for the next election will be the same as it was back when they hammered hewson on the GST, they will continue to purport that Libs still want Work Choices which as you rightly say have not been removed at all and are still alive and well but now called what ever Labor calls it.
Post a Comment