The ALP under fire
The ALP get a caning in todays Opinion page in The Australian with Michael Stutchbury, Economics editor writing on the problems of forcing the restaurants to march in step with hotels
JUST as licensing regulations restrict competition in the hotel industry, working conditions in pubs have long been standardised by the award system and the liquor trades union. By contrast, the restaurant business is lightly regulated, dynamic and highly competitive. Restaurants used John Howard’s Work Choices and its individual work contracts to more flexibly deploy and reward their waiters and cooks. Now it’s payback time as the Rudd Government foists the straitjacket of the protected hotel industry on to its restaurant competitors.Hotels can handle penalty loadings with their markups and large scale operations but restaurants, operating on tiny margins can’t, so I guess anybody thinking of starting a restaurant will, at the moment be thinking otherwise. Uni students who traditionally fill the restaurant jobs will have to look elsewhere.
Just one example is set out in sections 32.1 to 32.4 of the “modernised” Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2010. These impose 25 per cent penalty loadings for working on Saturday, 175 per cent for Sunday work, and 250 per cent for public holidays. Casuals get a hefty 25 per cent loading on top of that, lifting them up to 275 per cent for public holidays.Why bother going to Uni when you can get $450 a day as a dish pig! Pretty soon we’ll all be restricted to Maccas and KFC for weekend dining or you’ll be paying a hundred bucks for an eye fillet. Malcom Colless gets straight to the point under the header ALP Lacks IR Mandate
THE Rudd Government’s industrial relations laws are bad for business, bad for the economy, and bad for democracy and freedom in the workplace. They are designed to get square with employees who dared to enter into private deals with their employers and shut out the prying eyes of the unions.Colless again;
While the premise underpinning Work Choices was fundamentally sound – to encourage more flexibility and freedom of choice in the workplace – it was managed badly by the Coalition. But even then it was the well crafted and highly emotive union media campaign rather than the shortcomings of the system that drove a stake through the heart of the former government.That has long been my take on the last election and with the unions now demanding payback for the tens of millions they spent on outing Howard the economy is heading for disaster. Never mind the Global problem, when it is all sorted out we will find business has simply stopped employing people. Get used to it folks.
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“The ALP get a caning”
Kev, what else is new?
If you do a count (say last week) of articles – both reportage and opinion in the Oz, you’ll note a consistent anti-Labor bias.
I don’t have a problem with this – it’s a free country – but I do have a problem with the persistent bitching Bolt and others engage in about bias, whilst conveniently ignoring the national daily.
Fair go……
BTW, did you notice the state election result in Toowoomba South? Watch Dan Toombs – a civil rights lawyer with plenty of guts and a great work ethic. If Horan sits against next time, he’ll do him like a dinner.
The swing against Horan (nice guy – but ineffectual) defied the trend, and indicates a strong candidate who made enormous ground in a very short time. Shine was also returned.
Toowoomba, bastion of the conservative heartland, is changing.
Incidentally, I voted independent.
The Oz is possibly the only media outlet that gives some balance. That’s it. The ABC/SBS are left wing so they only criticize the ALP when its perceived as not left enough. The Courier Mail’s seven out of the top ten staff being ex ALP writers, media advisors etc says it all and Fairfax Press, well, they pretty well cover the country with their blatant ALP campaigning. So with all that against us – thank god at least one newspaper is rational and mainly unbiased.
Fair go…..
Human Rights lawyer for God’s sake. You can’t look after everyone in the electorate when you have trouble seeing past all the bleeding hearts.
Kev
Bleeding heart?
Apart from the images it conjures up for me as the result of a Catholic education, the term obviously has a different meaning for conservatives.
I wouldn’t regard it as a term of contempt, given that you could say I’ve been earning a crust as a bleeding heart for the last 40 years.
It’s possible to assist those in strife without neglecting those doing OK. There’s an argument that says to help one in need is to help all….if I had paid more attention to the nuns I could probably quote you the New Testament reference.
Remember Keith Teefey? Now there was a bleeding heart.