From the ABC

A spokesman for federal Finance Minister Nick Minchin says the Senator was expressing personal views and not government policy, when he told a meeting that the Coalition wants to push ahead with more changes to industrial relations (IR).
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Gus mince: Hello? Yep... Preparing the ground for more workers' rights to be eroded "down the track",..

The minister expressing his "personal views" that the Coalition wants to push ahead with more changes to industrial relations indicate he should be sacked for expressing these extreme views because he said "the Coalition wants to push ahead with" them. Does he mean there is a difference between the government and the coalition that runs the government? It is not fit and proper for him to hold his ministerial position.

From the ABC

Minchin's IR reform call finds support
A senior Government minister has given qualified support for another round of workplace relations changes following comments by Finance Minister Nick Minchin.
Senator Minchin last night told a meeting of the HR Nicholls Society that the Government should push on with another wave of industrial relations reform.
He has since said those comments were a personal view and not the Government's policy.
However, Environment Minister Ian Campbell says there should be more changes to workplace relations changes as part of broader economic reforms.
"I have said that more economic reform is something that is an absolute given," he said.
"We've just delivered substantial industrial relations reform and does that mean there won't need to be more in the future? Of course it doesn't.""""

Gus enlightens:
Hot and cold showers again from the pollies publicity department, all coordinated to perfection so that the Australian public is being massaged with "now you see it now you don't " illusion tricks... In the end we will be hooked... Sad but so obvious...

From the ABC
Howard rules out more IR changes
The Prime Minister has moved to hose down speculation about a new round of industrial relations changes.
Finance Minister Nick Minchin last night told a meeting of the HR Nicholls Society that the Government should push on with another wave of industrial relations reform.
He has since said those comments were a personal view and not the Government's policy.
However, he has still received support from Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who says there should be more workplace relations changes as part of broader economic reforms.
Unions say working people should be afraid of any new round of changes.
But John Howard says there is no plan to take any new industrial relations changes to the next election.
"We have gone a long way with industrial relations reforms," he said.
"The changes that went through last year were significant.

Gus : Not significant, BLOODY!!! Hold you breath for some tweaking...(of course not in favour of workers...)

From the ABC

Business leader backs call for more IR changes
A prominent business leader says there should be more changes made to Australia's industrial relations (IR) system but not for a few years yet.
Yesterday it was revealed that Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin had told a closed meeting that he believed the Howard Government should go to the next poll seeking a mandate for a second wave of reform.
The chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Hendy, has backed the Finance Minister's assertion that the Coalition should implement further changes.
Mr Hendy says the first priority should be implementing legislation passed last year but a number of outstanding issues will have to be addressed .
"There is still too much centralised decision making left with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission," he said.
"There is still too high a reliance on the award system which is a centralised system which is basically decided in the city of Melbourne for the whole of Australia.

GUS knows...
The "debate" here is only about how far the industry can push workers into the ground without damaging its customer base... But now most people have extended themselves into a "better" (meaner) lyfestyle through the user pay on credit card mentality, any wage coming their way, even in the forms of left over crumbs will relieve the pain... I know what I mean... The trick is going on...

From the ABC

Howard 'can't be trusted on IR matters'
The Federal Opposition refuses to accept assurances from the Prime Minister that he will not be taking any further workplace relations changes to the next election.
The issue has resurfaced after Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin told a closed meeting on the weekend that the Government should seek a mandate for a second wave of industrial changes.
But John Howard has categorically ruled that out.
"I want to make it very clear that we have undertaken some major reforms, they will come into operation later this month," Mr Howard said.
"As far as I am concerned and as far as the Government is concerned we don't have any intention of taking any further major changes on industrial relations to the next election."
Labor's industrial relations spokesman Stephen Smith says Mr Howard has made similar assurances before.
"On the things that John Howard is ideologically obsessed with, whether it's the GST or industrial relations, he'll say things like 'never ever' and does precisely the opposite," he said.

Hi Gus.

Of course, neanderthals like the HR Nicholl's Des Moore & its membership of "faceless men" would elicit more sympathy & support for their radical IR blueprint if they also advocated a "level playing field" in other "protected" areas of our economy, such as the legal profession, pharmacists & surgeons, just to name a few.

Perhaps if the "liberated" worker only had to pay the same marginal tax rates that Des's cronies had to pay, those workers might be more amenable?

Perhaps Australian workers would be more relaxed about an IR system which is essentially a free-for-all, where it's every man or woman for themselves, if some of the cosy monopolies / duopolies maintained for those at the "big end of town" were dismantled? 

Perhaps workers in organizations like Qantas might be more sympathetic & understanding of the need of the organization to outsource jobs to third-world countries, if the current selective "benchmarking" process was extended to executive positions, including Dixon's?

Otherwise, why shouldn't Qantas & other corporates be required to pay a higher rate of tax on their profits when they export jobs & thereby damage Australian society?

And if the Qantas scenario is taken to its logical conclusion & the business had no Australian domiciled employees, other than Geoff & his lackeys, then why should it continue to enjoy "protected status" as an "Australian" company? 

And perhaps the little rodent might have more credibility if he gave-up some of the taxpayer-funded perks that form "privileges of office" unique to his office, including the most generous superannuation plan in the country? 

And pigs might fly Gus!!! 

 

From the ABC

PM welcomes Qantas move not to move jobs offshore
Prime Minister John Howard says Qantas seems to have done its best to avoid having Australian jobs lost to other countries.
Four hundred and eighty Qantas positions in New South Wales will be slashed at the end of May but 140 workers are being offered positions at the Avalon facility in Victoria and others are set to go to Brisbane.
Mr Howard has told Southern Cross Radio it is better that the jobs are moved within Australia.

Gus remarks:
"Moved within Australia?" The little grocer (for wheat, bloddy hell and yellow cake) conveniently forgot to mention that 480 skilled jobs have just vanished in Sydney and won't be fully replaced ...

State liberals undermine Howard on IR"
was the headline screamed on the SMH front page today (10/03/06)
but nothing to show on the newspaper web site by 2.00 pm... As if the story had fallen off the perch.
Unless someone there realised that this was only apart of the ten paces forward, two paces backwards comedic routine, in order to achieve 50 per cent of an outrageous proposal that is exactly 100 per cent of where the government of our little grocer want to take us...

The "we are not that bad since we listen" routine... let me laugh, please.

‘Paris is burning, again. Well, not really - no need to
exaggerate like U.S. media did during the riots last year - it's really just a
few smoking cars and piles of garbage here and there, with tear gas and water
cannons thrown in for good measure. 

But it's not in the suburbs this
time - protests are happening at the Sorbonne, and at Place de la Nation, and
in major cities across France. Between 500,000 and 1.5 million people were
mobilized Saturday afternoon against a new youth labor contract that would,
among other things, allow employees - that are 18 to 26 years old - to be fired
without cause during the first two years of employment. 

In Paris alone, between 80,000
and 350,000 people marched through the streets, with students and labor unions
united against what they see as a proposition for substandard labor
protections, job insecurity and inequality reminiscent of American labor
conditions.’ 

Why French Youth Are Rioting - Again

From the ABC

IR laws may be fine-tuned: Ruddock
The Federal Government says it is not planning any more major workplace relations changes but it will not rule out what it calls "fine-tuning".

Unions have accused the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry of pushing for more changes to the WorkChoices laws.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions says a leaked document reveals that business is pushing for a cut in number of sick days, a relaxation of annual leave protections, and a removal of the 38-hour limit on the working week.

Labor leader Kim Beazley says it is a sign of things to come.

"John Howard is not finished with the Australian people yet," he said.

But the Acting Workplace Relations Minister, Philip Ruddock, is playing down the matter.

"If people want to make other suggestions as to further changes that's a matter for them but we will not be about fundamentally changing the arrangements we've put in place," he said.

But Mr Ruddock will not rule out minor technical alterations.

Sacking
In other IR news, the Federal Opposition says a Sydney woman sacked while on maternity leave is yet another example of the unfairness of the WorkChoices laws.

Elaine Gray says she was due to return to work in a month when her employer, Dialect Solutions, told that her job did not exist any more.

She says the company said it did not have to pay out her four weeks' notice as she was on maternity leave.

"After having been there four years I was entitled to, I would have been entitled to redundancy, which is two to four weeks' pay for every year so there's another potential 16 weeks," she said.

"So, all up, 20 I should have gotten prior to the IR reforms ... a big thank you to John Howard."

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See bigger stick at the head of this blog...

From The Washington Post

Devaluing Labor

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A19

Labor Day [in Amerika] is almost upon us, and like some of my fellow graybeards, I can, if I concentrate, actually remember what it was that this holiday once celebrated. Something about America being the land of broadly shared prosperity. Something about America being the first nation in human history that had a middle-class majority, where parents had every reason to think their children would fare even better than they had.
The young may be understandably incredulous, but the Great Compression, as economists call it, was the single most important social fact in our country in the decades after World War II. From 1947 through 1973, American productivity rose by a whopping 104 percent, and median family income rose by the very same 104 percent. More Americans bought homes and new cars and sent their kids to college than ever before. In ways more difficult to quantify, the mass prosperity fostered a generosity of spirit: The civil rights revolution and the Marshall Plan both emanated from an America in which most people were imbued with a sense of economic security.
That America is as dead as the dodo. Ours is the age of the Great Upward Redistribution. The median hourly wage for Americans has declined by 2 percent since 2003, though productivity has been rising handsomely. Last year, according to figures released just yesterday by the Census Bureau, wages for men declined by 1.8 percent and for women by 1.3 percent.
As a remarkable story by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt in Monday's New York Times makes abundantly clear, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of gross domestic product since 1947, when the government began measuring such things. Corporate profits, by contrast, have risen to their highest share of the GDP since the mid-'60s -- a gain that has come chiefly at the expense of American workers.

read more at [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082901042.html|The Washington Post]
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Gus: see cartoon at the head of this line of blogs...