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Understanding Industrial Relations
2008-04-10 10:55:00 Industrial Relations, which is also commonly referred as Labor Relations, and sometimes Workplace Relations is generally defined as the relationship between an employer and its employees that governs the employment and non-employment elements such as terms of employment, working condition, welfare, rights and obligation to each other, and so on. The purpose of the industrial relation ...
By: Skor Career
The Leadership debate - IR (un)truth test
2007-10-22 16:12:00 As one might expect, in the leadership debate, Howard made a few claims about the IR "reforms". Lets examine the veracity of some of these claims, remembering of course that one does not need to tell an outright lie to be untruthful. For example, when Howard was asked whether, under his WorkChoices laws employees could ...
By: Talk It Out
So who is engaging in thuggery?
2007-09-23 23:34:00 Remember those ridiculous big business-sponsored ads showing three thugs (supposed to represent union members) switching the lights off at a dress-maker store? Needless to say that militant unions and textile industry (especially small tailor shops) are not a realistic combination. In fact, somewhat ludicrously, one of the purported "union thugs" is wearing a CFMEU symbol ...
By: Talk It Out
Workchoices counter-advertising
2007-09-18 13:09:00 Watching TV is becoming increasingly more unpleasant - those incessant WorkChoices ads are very annoying. The nonsense about employees having “even more protection” from an ambiguous and unenforceable, backpacker administered fairness test, the smug looking actors trying to convince us that employers would never sack anyone unfairly, the self-serving big business ads… So I decided that ...
By: Talk It Out
Race to the bottom - more proof that WorkChoices harms employees
2007-09-13 15:46:00 The Workplace Research Centre just released a comprehensive research report into the effect of WorkChoices in the retail and hospitality industries. If any more proof was needed of the harm that WorkChoices causes to ordinary employees, this report provides it. Some 20 researchers looked at every collective agreement lodged between 26 March and 8 December 2006 ...
By: Talk It Out
Workplace relations system - you can?t get the facts
2007-09-09 15:22:00 Barbara Bennett, the head of Workplace Authority and the star of Howard government's ads singing praises to Workchoices, is doing her best to prove that the popular beliefs about Workchoices may not be as mythological as the ads would have us believe and that getting objective facts about the impact of Workchoices and the application ...
By: Talk It Out
Trust us - its not like we are after higher profits
2007-08-12 08:45:00 It's not like we have enough misleading Howard government advertisements clogging up our TV screens, a coalition of business groups have now released their own "independent" advertisement in support of Howard government WorkChoices laws (designed by Liberal party pollsters, no doubt for maximum independence from the government!). If anyone was in any doubt about whom ...
By: Talk It Out
Real choice and Workchoices
2007-07-24 16:10:00 I was at the Law Institute of Victoria Workplace Relations Section debate yesterday. The topic was "AWAs: Should they stay or should they go?" and the two combatants were Jeff Lawrence of Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union (LHMU) and next secretary of ACTU and Christopher Platt from the Australian Mines & Metals ...
By: Talk It Out
Equal pay row ups pressure on council industrial relations
2007-07-17 18:22:00 Industrial relations between local authorities and unions are becoming increasingly fraught as the equal pay crisis threatens to overwhelm local councils, senior figures have warned. Trade unions ramped up the pressure last week by holding a mass lobby of parliament, demanding extra cash be set aside to meet a final pay bill that could hit £5bn. The rally was held to mark the 10-year anniversary of the single-status agreement, which committed councils to ending pay discrimination. More than two-thirds of authorities have yet to introduce new structures. A key problem is that agreements are being unpicked by no-win, no-fee lawyers at tribunals, using rights under European law. Employers want the government to review the situation urgently and introduce new legislation to protect councils and give collective agreements more chance of success. Stephen Moir, lead on equal pay at the Public Sector People Managers? Association, warned that industrial relations were becoming...
Julia Gillard?s speech
2007-07-07 16:11:00 On 26 June 2007 I had the good fortune to be present at a breakfast organised by the Maurice Blackburn Cashman Women's Law Section, where Julia Gillard was a guest speaker. The speech has now been published on Gillard's website, so I thought now is a good time to discuss it without much risk of ...
By: Talk It Out
A truly Minimum wage increase
2007-07-05 15:43:00 The Australian Fair Pay Commission released its July 2007 wage decision (which will come into effect in October 2007). The summary of the decision can be viewed here. The Commission increased the federal minimum wage by a princely amount of 27 cents an hour for the workers on pay scales under $700 per week and ...
By: Talk It Out
The Australian Workplace (Dis)agreement
2007-06-27 15:50:00 These days The Australian often reads like it is edited by the Liberal party. Today's editorial regarding Labor's IR policies is no exception. The backhanded compliments to Labor for "fine tuning" its IR policy do little to disguise the fact that the Australian apparently believes that the only way that Labor's IR position is ...
By: Talk It Out
Crystal balls and election year politics
2007-06-23 16:36:00 A yet another embarrassing leak about big business plans to advertise in support of Howard's WorkChoices revealed that the business groups commissioned economic models to speculate on what economic benefits WorkChoices brings to Australia. The models are likely to be used as basis for advertisements to tell the voters about the inflation, unemployment levels and ...
By: Talk It Out
Encouraging people to become citizens is a dirty trick - just ask Hockey!
2007-06-23 08:40:00 Every time I think that the Howard government has reached the pinnacle of hypocrisy and dirty politics, I'm in for a surprise. Today is no exception. Joe Hockey accused the unions of using dirty "tricks to get workers to vote against the Howard government at the next election". Now that of itself is nothing new, the ...
By: Talk It Out
Who is afraid of whom?
2007-06-20 15:31:00 OK, lets face it, no one can be in the least bit surprised to learn that the intended advertising campaign by business organisations to promote WorkChoices is not quite independent of the Howard Government. The $11 million dollar ad blitz will be directed by a Liberal party pollster Mark Textor of a firm called Crosby/Textor, ...
By: Talk It Out
Be afraid, be very afraid?
2007-05-28 15:53:00 What do you do if you have become unpopular, your policies are unpopular, you can't convince the voters that taking away their rights is actually good for them and the billions you have spent on advertising yourself can't seem to lift your approval ratings? Resort to the tried and true way of winning elections - ...
By: Talk It Out
Rudd, Rein and witch-hunting Howard government style
2007-05-27 15:30:00 Yesterday I wrote about the political attacks on Kevin Rudd's wife, Therese Rein. One of companies owned by Rein mistakenly underpaid 58 of its employees. When the error was discovered, the underpayment was rectified. The Howard government and its supporters took advantage of the issue in an attempt to undermine Rudd's position on industrial relations. ...
By: Talk It Out
$4.1 million per week so no one will know where they stand
2007-05-26 12:07:00 Whatever I do these days I can't avoid the "Know where you stand" ads - they are on TV, they are in newspapers, they are everywhere. For a change there are no happy smiling faces (maybe they couldn't find anyone who was good enough an actor to pretend to be happy with the workplace relations ...
By: Talk It Out
$4.1 million per week so no one will know where they stand
2007-05-26 12:07:00 Whatever I do these days I can't avoid the "Know where you stand" ads - they are on TV, they are in newspapers, they are everywhere. For a change there are no happy smiling faces (maybe they couldn't find anyone who was good enough an actor to pretend to be happy with the workplace relations ...
By: Talk It Out
No fairness test in election year politics
2007-05-26 08:20:00 It would be a mundane story. A company underpays its employees. It carries out an audit, discovers the underpayment and repays the arrears. Worse things happen every day - workers on AWAs lose some or all of their "protected" award conditions, employers sack sex-attack victims for assisting the police. The government passed legislation specifically to ...
By: Talk It Out
No fairness test in election year politics
2007-05-26 08:20:00 It would be a mundane story. A company underpays its employees. It carries out an audit, discovers the underpayment and repays the arrears. Worse things happen every day - workers on AWAs lose some or all of their "protected" award conditions, employers sack sex-attack victims for assisting the police. The government passed legislation specifically to ...
By: Talk It Out
Psst, maybe no one will notice we don?t really believe it
2007-05-22 14:44:00 Ah, what wouldn't this government do to improve its electoral chances? They tried convincing us that being stripped of industrial rights was good for us. Now they are trying something new. Earlier today Joe Hockey told the press that the government "got it wrong" when it underestimated what would happen when it created "a system that ...
By: Talk It Out
Psst, maybe no one will notice we don?t really believe it
2007-05-22 14:44:00 Ah, what wouldn't this government do to improve its electoral chances? They tried convincing us that being stripped of industrial rights was good for us. Now they are trying something new. Earlier today Joe Hockey told the press that the government "got it wrong" when it underestimated what would happen when it created "a system that ...
By: Talk It Out
A war of words - use and misuse of language in battle for voter?s minds
2007-05-19 09:51:00 We seldom pause to think how powerful language is. Words are not only part of our communications, they are a part of our thoughts and perceptions. Something that has no word for it, no name, essentially does not exist. Similarly, giving something a name that is not truly reflective of its nature, will nonetheless influence ...
By: Talk It Out
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