I am struggling to write something this morning, not because of any writers block or anything, but rather I could rant on yet again about Terrorism and how Howard is stuffing the country or I could write something about the soccer result or I could be selfish (yet again) and discuss my cricket results and my decent knock on the weekend to support a losing cause.
But I am not in the mood for any of those topics. I have a severe case of Mondayitis and would rather be at home having a sleep in and relaxing. In other words, today would have been a prime candidate for chucking the great Australian Sickie. But no, I am on the train this morning, on time and going into the office for another week.
My mate Noyz, who is a school teacher, was asking if we were stopping work on Tuesday (tomorrow). I had no idea why but he explained that tomorrow is a national day of action in regards to the new Industrial Relations legislation coming through. As a teacher, he is in an active union and hence gets all the rhetoric from his union delegates on the evils of the Howard Government.
However, I had to ask, is it relevant any more? After so many years of a Liberal government, have the trade unions gone the way of the Dodo? The new legislation I feel is more at giving the power to the individual to negotiate employment conditions rather than the collective bargaining of the union movements. In short, the Unions would be more concerned at the new IR reforms as opposed to the individual worker. I may be misguided in this, but that’s the sense I get from the press to date. (I don’t belong in a
So driven by the Union movement, there is this National Day of Action tomorrow… I am interested to see if it has any impact on me at all…
There you go, I got moderately passionate about something on a Monday… maybe the day wont be so bad after all.
3 comments:
How can you be that ignorant about the new IR laws? 100 years of rights will go. It might not affect you, but it will sure as hell affect our kids.
I'm not ignorant, its just that you're the only person i know in a Union of substance...
I am all for workers entitlements etc, but do we need a Union to get these now?
I negotiate my entitlements when I join a company... why do I need some kickback merchant doing it for me?
I think the Unions are basically corrupt and seek to rort the system back the other way.
It should be legislated that redundancies are paid and that worker entitlements are first and foremost in a failed enterprise... everything else should be individually negotiated.
Surely mate, you would be happy getting paid for performance and ensuring that the deadwood in your industry (teaching) get culled? At the present, you're on a prescribed wage that encourages mediocrity.
You cannot have a system where a safety net such as awards and minimum wages are abolished. We do not want to end up like the U.S.
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